ARENA might end up teaching this person some mech-interp methods they haven’t seen before, although it sounds like they would be more than capable of self-teaching any mech-interp. The other potential value-add for your acquaintance would be if they wanted to improve their RL or Evals skills, and have a week to conduct a capstone project with advisors. If they were mostly aiming to improve their mech-interp ability by doing ARENA, there would probably be better ways to spend their time.
ARENA might end up teaching this person some mech-interp methods they haven’t seen before, although it sounds like they would be more than capable of self-teaching any mech-interp. The other potential value-add for your acquaintance would be if they wanted to improve their RL or Evals skills, and have a week to conduct a capstone project with advisors. If they were mostly aiming to improve their mech-interp ability by doing ARENA, there would probably be better ways to spend their time.