Main points in favor of this grant

1. I think that there should be more AI safety organizations to: harness the talent produced by AI safety field-building programs (MATS, ARENA, etc.); build an ecosystem of evals and auditing orgs; capture free energy for gov-funded and for-profit AI safety organizations with competent, aligned talent; and support a multitude of neglected research bets to aid potential paradigm shifts for AI safety. As an AI safety organization incubator, Catalyze seems like the most obvious solution.

2. As Co-Director at MATS, I have seen a lot of interest from scholars and alumni in founding AI safety organizations. However, most scholars do not have any entrepeneurial experience and little access to suitable co-founders in their networks. I am excited about Catalyze's proposed co-founder pairing program and start-up founder curriculum.

3. I know Kay Kozaronek fairly well from his time in the MATS Program. I think that he has a good mix of engagement with AI safety technical research priorities, entrepeneurial personality, and some experience in co-founding an AI safety startup (Cadenza Labs). I do not know Alexandra or Gábor quite as well, but they seem driven and bring diverse experience.

4. I think that the marginal value of my grant to Catalyze is very high at the moment. Catalyze are currently putting together funding proposals for their first incubator program and I suspect that their previous Lightspeed funding might run low before they receive confirmation from other funders.

Donor's main reservations

1. Alexandra and Kay do not have significant experience in founding/growing organizations and none of the core team seem to have significant experience with AI safety grantmaking or cause prioritization. However, I believe that Gábor brings significant entrepeneurial experience, and Jan-Willem and I, as advisory board members, bring significant additional experience in applicant selection. I don't see anyone else lining up to produce an AI safety org incubator and I think Alexandra, Kay, and Gábor have a decent chance at succeeding. Regardless, I recommend that Catalyze recruit another advisory board member with significant AI safety grantmaking experience to aid in applicant/project selection.

2. It's possible that Catalyze's incubator program helps further projects that contribute disproportionally to AI capabilities advances. I recommend that Catalyze consider the value alignment of participants and the capabilities-alignment tradeoff of projects during selection and incubation. Additionally, it would be ideal if Catalyze sought an additional advisory board member with significant experience in evaluating dual-use AI safety research.

3. There might not be enough high-level AI safety research talent available to produce many viable AI safety research organizations right away. I recommend that Catalyze run a MVP incubator program to assess the quality of founders/projects, including funder and VC interest, before investing in a large program.

Process for deciding amount

Alexandra said that $5k gives Catalyze one month of runway, so $15k gives them three months runway. I think that three months is more than sufficient time for Catalyze to receive funding from a larger donor and plan an MVP incubator program. I don't want Catalyze to fail because of short-term financial instability.

Conflicts of interest

1. I am an unpaid advisor to Catalyze. I will not accept any money for this role.

2. Kay was a scholar in MATS, the program I co-lead. Additionally, I expect that many potential participants in Catalyze's incubator programs will be MATS alumni. Part of MATS' theory of change is to aid the creation of further AI safety organizations and funders may assess MATS' impact on the basis of alumni achievements.

3. Catalyze wants to hold their incubator program at LISA, an office that I co-founded and at which remain a Board Member. However, I currently receive no income from LISA and, as a not-for-profit entity, I have no direct financial stake in LISA's success. However, I obviously want LISA to succeed and believe that a potential collaboration with Catalyze might be beneficial.

My donation represents my personal views and in no way constitutes an endorsement by MATS or LISA.

How useful is $5-10k? What impact does this buy on the margin currently?

@trishume Woohoo! We can support an additional ~7 scholars with this grant, based on the updated marginal cost of $21k/scholar.

Update update: Several more awesome mentors have come forward and we now are funding constrained again for Winter!

Update: we don't appear to be funding constrained for Winter, but will continue accepting donations for our Summer 2024 Program!

Main points in favor of this grant

1. Developmental interpretability seems like a potentially promising and relatively underexplored research direction for exploring neural network generalization and inductive biases. Hopefully, this research can complement low-level or probe-based approaches for neural network interpretability and eventually help predict, explain, and steer dangerous AI capabilities such as learned optimization and deceptive alignment.

2. Jesse made a strong, positive impression on me as a scholar in the SERI MATS Winter 2022-23 Cohort; his research was impressive and he engaged well with criticism and others scholars' diverse research projects. His mentor, Evan Hubinger, endorsed his research at the time and obviously continues to do, as indicated by his recent regrant. While Jesse is relatively young to steer a research team, he has strong endorsements and support from Dan Murfet, David Krueger, Evan Hubinger, and other researchers, and has displayed impressive enterpeneurship in launching Timaeus and organizing the SLT summits.

3. I recently met Dan Murfet at EAGxAustralia 2023 and was impressed by his research presentation skills, engagement with AI safety, and determination to build the first dedicated academic AI safety lab in Australia. Dan seems like a great research lead for the University of Melbourne lab, where much of this research will be based.

4. Australia has produced many top ML and AI safety researchers, but has so far lacked a dedicated AI safety organization to leverage local talent. I believe that we need more AI safety hubs, especially in academic institutions, and I see Timaeus (although remote) and the University of Melbourne as strong contenders.

5. Developmental interpretability seems like an ideal research vehicle to leverage underutilized physics and mathematics talent for AI safety. Jesse is a former physicist and Dan is a mathematician who previously specialized in algebraic geometry. In my experience as Co-Director of MATS, I have realized that many former physicists and mathematicians are deeply interested in AI safety, but lack a transitionary route to adapt their skills to the challenge.

6. Other funders (e.g., Open Phil, SFF) seem more reluctant (or at least slower) to fund this project than Manifund or Lightspeed and Jesse/Dan told me that they would need more funds within a week if they were going to hire another RA. I believe that this $20k is a high-expected value investment in reducing the stress associated with founding a potentially promising new AI safety organization and will allow Jesse/Dan to produce more exploratory research early to ascertain the value of SLT for AI safety.

Donor's main reservations

1. I have read several of Jesse's and Dan's posts about SLT and Dev Interp and watched several of their talks, but still feel that I don't entirely grasp the research direction. I could spend further time on this, but I feel more than confident enough to recommend $20k.

2. Jesse is relatively young to run a research organization and Dan is relatively new to AI safety research; however, they seem more than capable for my level of risk tolerance with $20k, even with my current $50k pot.

3. The University of Melbourne may not be an ideal (or supportive) home for this research team; however, Timaeus already plans to be somewhat remote and several fiscal sponsors (e.g., Rethink Priorities Special Projects, BERI, Ashgro) would likely be willing to support their researchers.

Process for deciding amount

I chose to donate $20k because Jesse said that a single paper would cost $40k (roughly 1 RA-year) and my budget is limited. I encourage further regrantors to join me and fund another half-paper!

Conflicts of interest

Jesse was a scholar in the program I co-lead, but I do not believe that this constitutes a conflict of interest.

@alenglander, when do you expect to hear back from the LTFF? Was the Nonlinear Network funding successful?