(Formerly the EA Hotel )
Centre for Enabling EA Learning & Research (Blackpool, UK)
CEEALAR
Karma: 1,529
I know, right? ;)
Thanks for catching that, fixed.
CEEALAR provides cost-effective support to EAs working on global catastrophic risks in the form of free or subsidised coliving and coworking spaces, but has so far been unsuccessful in securing EAIF grants. Does EAIF see a role for this type of infrastructure? If so, what would you like it to look like?
How The Centre for Enabling EA Learning and Research would use additional funding
The Centre for Enabling EA Learning and Research (CEEALAR) is a space for promising EAs to rapidly upskill, perform research, and work on charitable and entrepreneurial projects. We provide assistance at low cost to those seeking to do the most good through subsidising accommodation, organising a productive atmosphere, and fostering a strong EA community. We recently published a post announcing that we are funding constrained and looking to attract new donors over this giving season.
How we would use extra funding
It costs us £12,500 ($15,500) to run CEEALAR for 1 month. We host an average of 20 grantees at a time – making the cost of supporting 1 grantee for 1 month £625 ($750). Unfortunately, we only have ~3 months runway remaining: a donation from you would extend our runway and enable us to support more promising EAs.
We do not know all of the applicants we will be supporting 3 months from now; however, we recently updated our application criteria to be increasingly selective, and are seeing the results of assisting such high-quality applicants. To give a sense of how much can happen in 1 month alone, we have included examples of outputs solely from October. We are confident that we would accept applicants of similar quality and see similar outputs in the spring months if we are able to extend our runway.
Donations extending our runway will:
Enable more talented individuals to upskill into impactful work
This October, a recent alumnus now working as a researcher in the MIT Fraenkel Lab (where they are building an LLM for metabolomics research using retrieval-augmented generation) was accepted to the AI Futures Fellowship Program. They used their time at CEEALAR to transition from a career in data science to AI safety research.
Enable more EA organisations to launch
This October, two current guests received funding from an EA grantmaking org to launch ML4Good UK. ML4Good is a project that runs intensive AI safety bootcamps in the UK, Germany, France, and Switzerland. Before coming to CEEALAR, they worked in banking and tech respectively and were only involved in EA in a voluntary capacity.
Enable more EA research to be done
This October, a current guest had their research paper accepted to the Socially Responsible Language Modelling Research (SoLaR) conference. They are using their time at CEEALAR to transition from an academic career in physics to AI safety research.
How you can donate
You can donate here – all donations are greatly appreciated and will help us stay alive! We support PayPal, Ko-Fi, PPF Fiscal Sponsorship, and bank transfer donations.
You can find out more about CEEALAR here! Please feel free to ask us questions at contact@ceealar.org.
We are hiring for a full-time Operations Manager, please share with anyone you think may be interested: https://ceealar.org/job-operations-manager
To start mid-late February. £31,286 – £35,457 per year (full time, 40 hours a week).
Our Giving Tuesday Facebook Fundraiser is here: https://www.facebook.com/donate/388638269043274/
Thanks, fixed!
Happy to announce that we are now a registered charity!
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We did put a fair bit of thinking into it! Open to suggestions, but they will have to be quick (our reapplication to the Charity Commission has been considerably delayed already. Note that the lawyer we consulted about our application liked the name).
Using the word “Hotel” is problematic as it’s generally too associated with “for-profit” unfortunately. The other ideas you mention seem too generic; “Enabling EA Learning & Research” is a very concise summary of what we actually do. We didn’t come up with anything better that was a pronounceable acronym.
The main reason for the change is to make it immediately obvious that we are a non-profit. The building is still called the Athena Hotel.
Re: “water wars”. That article is from 2009. Since then there has been Syria.
Post now up.
Missing karma scores added (and the rest updated for consistency—scores correct as of 8th Nov 2019).
The Project and Community Manager (or Community & Projects Manager) is a role that largely involves overseeing the EA-focused work being done at the Hotel, facilitating productivity and offering practical and strategic advice to guests, in order to help maximise the value of their work to the world.
Other tasks for this role include: answering email enquiries; video calls with applicants; coordinating with Trustees and Advisors to vet applicants; helping maintain community morale at a high level, and resolving conflict if it arises, in coordination with the Operations Manager; developing overall strategy for the EA Hotel, in coordination with Trustees.
We hope to do a hiring round for the role as and when we get back to 6 months runway of general operating costs, and appreciate Nicole’s interest in potentially funding the role. Denisa Pop is currently in the role in the interim.
Our next post will include some case studies with counterfactuals.
OP and fundraiser page now updated. tldr: runway now ~3 months :)
It’s looking like we now have runway until the end of the year, thanks to you three and others who have donated in the last few days :) Will post a more detailed update (and update the fundraiser page) in the coming days.
Exactly right on both counts.
Our open-ended residency is most useful for people who are already doing solid work and can level up in our environment. The value is to do your best work, and live your best life with fewer constraints, better feedback loops, and a community of peers pushing similar frontiers. Structure could be beneficial for people in transition: career shifters, recent graduates, researchers testing fit for independent work, and impact entrepreneurs. Our programs would give you the peers in your cohort, and the necessary tools and guardrails on your journey.
The funder clarity point is very similar to startup ecosystem VC funding. “We subsidize housing for self-directed people” is vague and hard to evaluate. “We run a 3-6 month fellowship with structured programming, embedded assessment, and outcome tracking” gives funders something concrete to fund and measure. That’s exactly why we’re building toward the latter; it’s better for residents and makes a clearer case for support.
The self-direction spectrum is something we’re thinking hard about as we design programming and guide our community. Too much structure and you lose the benefits of extended deep work time. Too little, and some residents drift without making progress. We’re aiming to build the supportive structure, the scaffolding (regular check-ins, peer/coach accountability, access to mentorship, etc.) that supports without micromanaging, and each resident can get custom benefits fit for their needs.