Clearly writing out the evidence that you’re a good candidate for the grant. This can look like conventional credentials, past projects, references, etc, just anything which increases my probability that it’s a good idea
Scoping out the purpose of the grant. In particular, I generally expect that when someone without a track record of AI Safety/similar research does an independent research project, it’s fairly unlikely to actually result in impactful research (doing good research is really hard!), and that most of the impact comes from helping the person skill up, test fit, and either get a job or do better projects in future. You tend to skill up best when making a sincere effort to do good research, so this doesn’t mean don’t think about it all, but I would also discuss the skilling up benefits to you and why that matters
I like Caleb’s answer. Some more thoughts
Clearly writing out the evidence that you’re a good candidate for the grant. This can look like conventional credentials, past projects, references, etc, just anything which increases my probability that it’s a good idea
Scoping out the purpose of the grant. In particular, I generally expect that when someone without a track record of AI Safety/similar research does an independent research project, it’s fairly unlikely to actually result in impactful research (doing good research is really hard!), and that most of the impact comes from helping the person skill up, test fit, and either get a job or do better projects in future. You tend to skill up best when making a sincere effort to do good research, so this doesn’t mean don’t think about it all, but I would also discuss the skilling up benefits to you and why that matters