It seems that OPâs AI safety & gov teams have both been historically capacity-constrained. Why the decision to hire for these roles now (rather than earlier)?
The technical folks leading our AI alignment grantmaking (Daniel Dewey and Catherine Olsson) left to do more âdirectâ work elsewhere a while back, and Ajeya only switched from a research focus (e.g. the Bio Anchors report) to an alignment grantmaking focus late last year. She did some private recruiting early this year, which resulted in Max Nadeau joining her team very recently, but sheâd like to hire more. So the answer to âWhy now?â on alignment grantmaking is âAjeya started hiring soon after she switched into a grantmaking role. Before that, our initial alignment grantmakers left, and itâs been hard to find technical folks who want to focus on grantmaking rather than on more thoroughly technical work.â
Re: the governance team. Iâve lead AI governance grantmaking at Open Phil since ~2019, but for a few years we felt very unclear about what our strategy should be, and our strategic priorities shifted rapidly, and it felt risky to hire new people into a role that might go away through no fault of their own as our strategy shifted. In retrospect, this was a mistake and I wish weâd started to grow the team at least as early as 2021. By 2022 I was finally forced into a situation of âWell, even if itâs risky to take people on, there is just an insane amount of stuff to do and I donât have time for ~any of it, so I need to hire.â Then I did a couple non-public hiring rounds which resulted in recent new hires Alex Lawsen, Trevor Levin, and Julian Hazell. But we still need to hire more; all of us are already overbooked and turning down opportunities for lack of bandwidth constantly.
The hiring is more incremental than it might seem. As explained above, Ajeya and I started growing our teams earlier via non-public rounds, and are now just continuing to hire. Claire and Andrew have been hiring regularly for their teams for years, and are also just continuing to hire. The GCRCP team only came into existence a couple months ago and so is hiring for that team for the first time. We simply chose to combine all these hiring efforts into one round because that makes things more efficient on the backend, especially given that many people might be a fit for one or more roles on multiple teams.
It seems that OPâs AI safety & gov teams have both been historically capacity-constrained. Why the decision to hire for these roles now (rather than earlier)?
(FYI to othersâIâve just seen Ajeyaâs very helpful writeup, which has already partially answer this question!)
The technical folks leading our AI alignment grantmaking (Daniel Dewey and Catherine Olsson) left to do more âdirectâ work elsewhere a while back, and Ajeya only switched from a research focus (e.g. the Bio Anchors report) to an alignment grantmaking focus late last year. She did some private recruiting early this year, which resulted in Max Nadeau joining her team very recently, but sheâd like to hire more. So the answer to âWhy now?â on alignment grantmaking is âAjeya started hiring soon after she switched into a grantmaking role. Before that, our initial alignment grantmakers left, and itâs been hard to find technical folks who want to focus on grantmaking rather than on more thoroughly technical work.â
Re: the governance team. Iâve lead AI governance grantmaking at Open Phil since ~2019, but for a few years we felt very unclear about what our strategy should be, and our strategic priorities shifted rapidly, and it felt risky to hire new people into a role that might go away through no fault of their own as our strategy shifted. In retrospect, this was a mistake and I wish weâd started to grow the team at least as early as 2021. By 2022 I was finally forced into a situation of âWell, even if itâs risky to take people on, there is just an insane amount of stuff to do and I donât have time for ~any of it, so I need to hire.â Then I did a couple non-public hiring rounds which resulted in recent new hires Alex Lawsen, Trevor Levin, and Julian Hazell. But we still need to hire more; all of us are already overbooked and turning down opportunities for lack of bandwidth constantly.
To add on this, Iâm confused by your choice to grow these teams quite abruptly as opposed to incrementally. Whatâs your underlying reasoning?
The hiring is more incremental than it might seem. As explained above, Ajeya and I started growing our teams earlier via non-public rounds, and are now just continuing to hire. Claire and Andrew have been hiring regularly for their teams for years, and are also just continuing to hire. The GCRCP team only came into existence a couple months ago and so is hiring for that team for the first time. We simply chose to combine all these hiring efforts into one round because that makes things more efficient on the backend, especially given that many people might be a fit for one or more roles on multiple teams.