How likely is it for someone to obtain early-career transition funding either via Open Philanthropy career transition grant or the LTFF (opens back again in August)? Also, how does someone boost their chances of obtaining such funding?
I have been involved in AI Safety for the past 1 year via a multitude of things (e.g. read Human Compatible/Superintelligence, completed AI Safety Fundamental by BlueDot independently, almost finished all of the ARENA content independently, engaged with AI Safety Hungary as a teaching assistant for their online version of ARENA, engaged with my local AI Safety group in Ireland by giving a talk, decided to have my MSc. thesis on AI Debate via Program Synthesis and probably most importantly, doing research as part of MARS 3.0 sponsored by Cambridge AI Safety Hub), but I am scared that I have not done enough for me to quit my job and obtain the necessary funding for next couple of months. Very recently, I have been approved for a 80k career advising session, but I would like more opinions on this specifically.
There are multiple possibilities here (given my target is around 20k funding in the next 9-12 months):
Get some limited funding (let’s say something around 10k) for the next 3-6 months, then reapply for more at a later date.
Apply for limited funding from different sources (let’s say 10k from Open Philanthropy and 10k from LTFF), which equals my desired amount (this could be dropped to something like 5k from each, and apply the strategy from the previous point).
Apply for the desired amount with the hope that they will fund as close as possible.
The main goal during this career transition period is for me to focus my full energy/focus on AI Safety and complete some research projects that can boost my chances of obtaining further funding (this is mostly governmental funding) for a PhD in AI Safety next year.
How likely is it for someone to obtain early-career transition funding either via Open Philanthropy career transition grant or the LTFF (opens back again in August)? Also, how does someone boost their chances of obtaining such funding?
I have been involved in AI Safety for the past 1 year via a multitude of things (e.g. read Human Compatible/Superintelligence, completed AI Safety Fundamental by BlueDot independently, almost finished all of the ARENA content independently, engaged with AI Safety Hungary as a teaching assistant for their online version of ARENA, engaged with my local AI Safety group in Ireland by giving a talk, decided to have my MSc. thesis on AI Debate via Program Synthesis and probably most importantly, doing research as part of MARS 3.0 sponsored by Cambridge AI Safety Hub), but I am scared that I have not done enough for me to quit my job and obtain the necessary funding for next couple of months. Very recently, I have been approved for a 80k career advising session, but I would like more opinions on this specifically.
There are multiple possibilities here (given my target is around 20k funding in the next 9-12 months):
Get some limited funding (let’s say something around 10k) for the next 3-6 months, then reapply for more at a later date.
Apply for limited funding from different sources (let’s say 10k from Open Philanthropy and 10k from LTFF), which equals my desired amount (this could be dropped to something like 5k from each, and apply the strategy from the previous point).
Apply for the desired amount with the hope that they will fund as close as possible.
The main goal during this career transition period is for me to focus my full energy/focus on AI Safety and complete some research projects that can boost my chances of obtaining further funding (this is mostly governmental funding) for a PhD in AI Safety next year.