Hey! I definitely don’t expect people starting AI safety research to have a track record doing AI safety work—in fact, I think some of our most valuable grants are paying for smart people to transition into AI safety from other fields. I don’t know the details of your situation, but in general I don’t think “former physics student starting AI safety work” fits into the category of “project would be good if executed exceptionally well”. In that case, I think most of the value would come from supporting the transition of someone who could potentially be really good, rather than from the object-level work itself.
In the case of other technical Ph.D.s, I generally check whether their work is impressive in the context of their field, whether their academic credentials are impressive, what their references have to say. I also place a lot of weight on whether their proposal makes sense and shows an understanding of the topic, and on my own impressions of the person after talking to them.
I do want to emphasize that “paying a smart person to test their fit for AI safety” is a really good use of money from my perspective—if the person turns out to be good, I’ve in some sense paid for a whole lifetime of high-quality AI safety research. So I think my bar is not as high as it is when evaluating grant proposals for object-level work from people I already know.
Hey! I definitely don’t expect people starting AI safety research to have a track record doing AI safety work—in fact, I think some of our most valuable grants are paying for smart people to transition into AI safety from other fields. I don’t know the details of your situation, but in general I don’t think “former physics student starting AI safety work” fits into the category of “project would be good if executed exceptionally well”. In that case, I think most of the value would come from supporting the transition of someone who could potentially be really good, rather than from the object-level work itself.
In the case of other technical Ph.D.s, I generally check whether their work is impressive in the context of their field, whether their academic credentials are impressive, what their references have to say. I also place a lot of weight on whether their proposal makes sense and shows an understanding of the topic, and on my own impressions of the person after talking to them.
I do want to emphasize that “paying a smart person to test their fit for AI safety” is a really good use of money from my perspective—if the person turns out to be good, I’ve in some sense paid for a whole lifetime of high-quality AI safety research. So I think my bar is not as high as it is when evaluating grant proposals for object-level work from people I already know.