What kind of numbers are we talking about needing here???
How much did it cost for the last Lightspeed round? How were the operations funded? How much distributed? $5mm?
How much would you need for operations in order to run it again? If you had the operations funding would the grants funding still be a problem? How much would you need for operations just for the grant decisions but not the distribution of funds?
I’m interested to know why we haven’t seen Lightspeed Grants again?
Some of my thoughts on Lightspeed Grants from what I remember: I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to name something after the key feature everyone else in the market is failing at. It leads to particularly high expectations and is really hard to get away from. (Eg OpenAI) The S-process seemed like a strange thing to include for something intended to be fast. As far as I know the S-process has never been done quickly. It also seems to be dependent on every parameter being in place in order to be run so can easily be held up by something small.
At the time of applications it had a clear date when decisions were expected, this is much better than everyone else’s vague expectations. It ended up taking much longer than expected for decisions but still pretty quick overall. This was managed really well though. Certainly much better than LTFFs handing of a large volume of slow decisions last year. I judge the timing of decisions more on how late they are than the total time, but this is a proxy for the real problem which is uncertainty. Lightspeed got the basics right when it comes to comms.
I think it was really good over all and I’d expect that the major issues not accounted for in the first round can be managed. I would really like to see this run again or a variation of it.
I think if we as the question “should the LTFF shutdown?” The answer is always “no, it clearly does good that no one else is trying to do”
But if you ask “if the LTFF never existed and you were designing a fund from scratch would it look exactly like the LTFF?” I think this is a clear “no” as well.
I don’t think LTFF is able to fix its current problems or be drastically modified to what you might have designed if it never existed. And of course it crowds out anyone else from solving this.
Yeah, I have personally appreciated the short turn around when needed. And seen plenty of situations where people need funds quickly.
I expect there are a lot of these tradeoffs. I think these should be solved by different services not by trying to solve all of the different types of funding together. LTFF ended up here for historical reasons, but now seems to be struggling to serve all of these markets while also crowding out any new funders in the space.
If I set up a new fund it would have rounds and I would just accept that this fund would not be able to support those kinds of applicants that need a fast turn around or longer investigations. A lot of the problems of the applicant experience with LTFF is uncertainty. Having one application form that try’s to solve all of these problems means that the expectations can’t be specific enough to be meaningful.
What is the current response time for the LTFF?
I think it’s actually better for applicant to have a deadline too. Plenty of people procrastinate on applying, some to the point of eventually not bothering at all. Also, if you are rejected but encouraged to reapply it’s clearer when it’s ok to apply. SFF has two rounds a year and I’ve applied, been rejected and then applied again the next round. I’ve probably applied more times to SFF than LTFF and this mostly comes down to there being an application deadline.
Also probably helps when getting rejected and comparing to other things you see get funded. If you see something a year ago that is just like what you were doing or seems much less value got funded it’s hard to understand that the funding bar might have been different then. It’s a much cleaner comparison when you are all in one group.
I think even for myself getting funded by SFF one round and not a later round. I think “oh, look at all these new projects that didn’t exist before that are so clearly awesome. Fair enough they don’t have funding for me any more”
To be fair, since announcing AISS shutting down, I am having a lot more conversations with people with negative experiences. So now I am comparing the counterfactual good to the bad. It is a big blind spot. People don’t make public posts about this. It’s no one’s job to collect all of the counter cases.
“Choose not to apply” is big part of the problem.
A person gets funded by LTFF but because they had a bad experience as an applicant they choose not to apply and put themselves through that experience again. They also choose not to apply or raise funds anywhere else. So we lost the value of that project continuing. Maybe they went on to do something pretty neutral or maybe they went on to work on capabilities.
People talk privately about this but not publicly. Which leads to others convincing themselves to not apply at all. Some potential donors have more people with bad experiences than good in their network and so don’t want to donate to LTFF. Yes, I’ve spoken to a few people in these cases and despite my own experience I encouraged people to apply anyway.
A core part of my decision to shut down AISS was that I didn’t want to have to be an applicant again. We had gotten funding from LTFF and SFF before but I had reached a point where if we had gotten the funding we were waiting for I would not be continuing after that funding had run out.
This is just some of the downstream effects of bad applicant experience for things actually funded by LTFF.
There are some issues with rejected applications too. Mostly related to the how the applicant and others update based on the rejection.
Project A get rejected, apparently because it might not be the best version of that kind of thing and could crowd out the market for a better version to come along. Someone sees the gap, starts planning Project B that could be better. They chose not to apply because in exploring the idea for their project they find out Project A wanted to do this but couldn’t get funding. Project B wrongly assumes that funders are not interested in funding this kind of project and so give up.
Yes, burnt out. Yes, lack of funds.
AISS ran out of funding while waiting for a decision from the LTFF. In my original post I said I wasn’t looking for funding, because I had reached a point where even if the project got fully funded I would not want to be running it when we next needed funding.
My requests would mostly be around better communication. Despite waiting so long for a decision that we ran out of funding and I gave up would seem like I would want decisions to be faster. I think there are some much easier wins around communication that would drastically improve the applicant experience independent of how long it takes to process a decision.
Only a few days after I posted this update I found out that the reason LTFF hadnt made a decision on my grant is that they were low on funding. If we had been below their normal funding bar we would have already been rejected. Just having this information could have critical.
A few weeks earlier I was talking to an individual that could have personally funded AISS for a year. Their main hesitation for not funding us was that LTFF still hadn’t decided. They assumed LTFF has some concerns that they are not aware of. They assumed that LTFF was not funding constrained. At that moment if I had know LTFFs real position I could have told this to the donor and helped my and LTFFs funding problem.
If I were to run an AI Safety Fund
Fixed not rolling application rounds. Fund raising rounds tied to application rounds. So on day 1 you open applications and donations for that round. On day 90 you close applications and donation. You now have a fixed budget and a fixed pool of applications. No need to reject incase we get a better application next week. No need to delay an acceptance while hoping to get more funding next week. Fixed due date for decisions. This date should be embarrassingly achievable. At the end of the round we update all applicants and donors of the $$$ in applications and only $ funded projects. Somewhere between these two numbers is the funding gap. Rejected applicants now know they were rejected because of funding shortage and become donors or fundraisers themselves.
Applicants only need to be ranked relative to each other not against a funding bar.
I spoke to another person just today that had a horrible experience with EA Funds.
I have mostly believed that despite its flaws, it is better to have the LTFF than nothing. I am starting to think that it is a a net harm.
Some of my thoughts on funding.
It’s giving season and I want to finally get around to publishing some of my thoughts and experiences around funding. I haven’t written anything yet because I feel like I am mostly just revisiting painful experiences and will end up writing some angry rant. I have ideas for how things could be better so hopefully this can lead to positive change not just more complaining. All my experiences are in AI Safety.
On Timing: Certainty is more important than speed. The total decision time is less important than the overdue time. Expecting a decision in 30 days and getting it in 35 days is worse than if I expect the decision in 90 days and I get it in 85 days.
Grantmakers providing statistics about timing expectations makes things worse. If the mean or median response time is N days it is now N+5 days is it appropriate for me to send a follow-up email to check on the status? Technically it’s not late yet. It could come tomorrow or in N more days. Imagine if the Uber app showed you the global mean wait time for the last 12 months and there was no map to track your driver’s arrival.
“It doesn’t have to reduce the waiting time it just has to reduce the uncertainty”—Rory Sutherland
My conversations about people’s expectations and experiences with people in Berkeley are at times very different to those outside of Berkeley.
After I posted my announcement about shutting down AISS and my comment on the LTFF update several people reached out to me about their experiences. Some people I already knew well, some I had met and others I didn’t know before. Some of them had received funding a couple of times but their negative experiences led them to not reapply and walk away from their work or the ecosystem entirely. At least one mentioned having a draft post about their experience that they did not feel comfortable publishing.
There was definitely a point for me where I had already given up but just not realised it. I had already run out of funding, I was still waiting for a funding decision but even if I had gotten the funding at that stage there was no way that I would still be working on the project when it next needed funding.
I lost a lot of sleep waiting for a decision from someone on the other side of the planet. Aware that they are likely overwhelmed themselves. I stressed about when it was appropriate so send another follow-up email. What difference would it really make? I don’t want to be rude and pushy, particularly to the person who decides if I will be keeping my job
Funding renewals should be treated differently from initial funding. I know someone who got funding for a year to work on their project. They then reapplied for another year and got rejected. Imagine applying for a full time job. The hiring manager asks you one follow-up question via email but never interviews you for the job. Almost a year goes by and you have been working hard but still never even met your manager. You are up for a review, and a different manager reviews your written report. This new manager again never meets with you but decides to fire you with no severance payout. This may not be what is technically happening, but the emotional experience is far better expressed with “I got fired by someone I have never met” than “my tuning application was not accepted”
Region beta paradox. Fully fund or reject. Don’t under fund to see how it goes and then be disappointed it didn’t go well.
I was supposed to give some ideas that might lead to some positive change…
Grantmakers should have a hard due date. Prioritise communication over reducing total decision time. Prioritise reducing late-time over reducing total decision time.
If I were to be an applicant again I would set my own hard decision date. If I had not heard back from the grantmaker by that date then the next day I would send an email to the grantmaker to withdraw my application. Eliminating the uncertainty and inability to take actions.
Good question.
I have a few draft forum posts over the years that I don’t really have an interest in publishing.
I feel like I’ve found it pretty stressful each time I’ve posted or even commented. (yes, even this) After posting, I waste so much time checking the comments and changes in karma. I, naturally, feel every downvote or negative comment far more than upvotes or positive comments. Positive comments are actively discouraged (downvoted) here, which might make this worse.
Some of the most frustrating comments are ones that correct some minor details that, don’t impact the posts core point, or mention some exceptions as if they discount the whole idea.
I think this is a big part of why I don’t finish my draft posts. The drafts are short and just cover the main point I have, but I need to 10x my time, effort and length so that I address every obvious exception, edge case, rebuttal…
I think ultimately I find it to be a very negative feedback loop. Posting is stressful. Every single time. It’s not like I’m anxious before posting and then after I post I get a big hit of dopamine from the responses. This would provide some positive feed back loop like posting on social media.
My neurotransmitters take no account of expected value calculations.
I am so grateful I live in a time with audio books, podcasts, YouTube, text-to-speach
Thank you for doing this Ben. Thank you for navigating a way through all of these issues that have prevented others from doing this.
I wonder how much my aversion to text based communication is holding me back.
This change also helps with text-to-speach
I have pretty mixed feelings about this. I greatly appreciate and respect the constrains you are operating under and the hard, often thankless work of those involved.
I have a lot of thoughts about this update and the funds in general based on my direct experience as an applicant, from being involved with a number of projects and applications and from what I have heard from others.
I might find the courage to say more about this publicly at some point but I did want to say that my experience with EA Funds, is a significant part of my decision to shut down AI Safety Support.
I’ve always been surprised that there is no fund you can donate to that is only for AI Alignment. You can either donate directly to an org or project or you can donate to a longtermist fund which is broader than just alignment.
I’ve tried to argue before that plenty of people are just not that cause neutral and would want to donate to a fund just for alignment. And now that alignment has gone much more mainstream it is even more important that we actually have a legible place for people to donate.
AI Safety has gone mainstream but most people in the world wouldn’t have a clue what “longtermism” is.
No decision from LTFF. Funding wouldn’t help at this point.
I’m hesitant to ask you about this so feel free to pass. Can you say more about how it is that your current salary is $0?
I think most people would be surprised you are not currently receiving a salary. I also assume that as a not-for-profit founder even when you have had a salary it is lower than most or all of your team.