Disclaimer: I joined OP two weeks ago in the Program Associate role on the Technical AI Safety team. I’m leaving some comments describing questions I wanted to know to assess whether I should take the job (which, obviously, I ended up doing).
What does OP’s TAIS funding go to? Don’t professors’ salaries already get paid by their universities? Can (or can’t) PhD students in AI get no-strings-attached funding (at least, can PhD students at prestigious universities)?
Professors typically have their own salaries covered, but need to secure funding for each new student they take on, so providing funding to an academic lab allows them to take on more students and grow (it’s not always the case that everyone is taking on as many students as they can manage). Additionally, it’s often hard for professors to get funding for non-student expenses (compute, engineering help, data labeling contractors, etc) through NSF grants and similar, which are often restricted to students.
Disclaimer: I joined OP two weeks ago in the Program Associate role on the Technical AI Safety team. I’m leaving some comments describing questions I wanted to know to assess whether I should take the job (which, obviously, I ended up doing).
What does OP’s TAIS funding go to? Don’t professors’ salaries already get paid by their universities? Can (or can’t) PhD students in AI get no-strings-attached funding (at least, can PhD students at prestigious universities)?
Professors typically have their own salaries covered, but need to secure funding for each new student they take on, so providing funding to an academic lab allows them to take on more students and grow (it’s not always the case that everyone is taking on as many students as they can manage). Additionally, it’s often hard for professors to get funding for non-student expenses (compute, engineering help, data labeling contractors, etc) through NSF grants and similar, which are often restricted to students.