Does anyone have advice on how I could work full-time on an alignment research agenda I have? It looks like trying to get a LTFF grant is the best option for this kind of thing, but if after working more time alone on it, it keeps looking like it could succeed, it’s likely that it would become too big for me alone, I would need help from other people, and that looks hard to get. So, any advice from anyone who’s been in a similar situation? Also, how does this compare with getting a job at an alignment org? Is there any org where I would have a comparable amount of freedom if my ideas are good enough?
Edit: It took way longer than I thought it would, but I’ve finally sent my first LTFF grant application! Now let’s just hope they understand it and think it is good.
My recommendation would be to get an LTFF, manifund, or survival and flourishing fund grant to work on the research, then if it seems to be going well, try getting into MATS, or move to Berkeley & work in an office with other independent researchers like FAR for a while, and use either of those situations to find co-founders for an org that you can scale to a greater number of people.
Alternatively, you can call up your smart & trustworthy college friends to help start your org.
I do think there’s just not that much experience or skill around these parts with setting up highly effective & scalable organizations, so what help can be provided won’t be that helpful. In terms of resources for how to do that, I’d recommend Y Combinator’s How to Start a Startup lecture recordings, and I’ve been recommended the book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business.
It should also be noted that if you do want to build a large org in this space, once you get to the large org phase, OpenPhil has historically been less happy to fund you (unless you’re also making AGI[1]).
This is not me being salty, the obvious response to “OpenPhil has historically not been happy to fund orgs trying to grow to larger numbers of employees” is “but what about OpenAI or Anthropic?” Which I think are qualitatively different than, say, Apollo.
Does anyone have advice on how I could work full-time on an alignment research agenda I have? It looks like trying to get a LTFF grant is the best option for this kind of thing, but if after working more time alone on it, it keeps looking like it could succeed, it’s likely that it would become too big for me alone, I would need help from other people, and that looks hard to get. So, any advice from anyone who’s been in a similar situation? Also, how does this compare with getting a job at an alignment org? Is there any org where I would have a comparable amount of freedom if my ideas are good enough?
Edit: It took way longer than I thought it would, but I’ve finally sent my first LTFF grant application! Now let’s just hope they understand it and think it is good.
My recommendation would be to get an LTFF, manifund, or survival and flourishing fund grant to work on the research, then if it seems to be going well, try getting into MATS, or move to Berkeley & work in an office with other independent researchers like FAR for a while, and use either of those situations to find co-founders for an org that you can scale to a greater number of people.
Alternatively, you can call up your smart & trustworthy college friends to help start your org.
I do think there’s just not that much experience or skill around these parts with setting up highly effective & scalable organizations, so what help can be provided won’t be that helpful. In terms of resources for how to do that, I’d recommend Y Combinator’s How to Start a Startup lecture recordings, and I’ve been recommended the book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business.
It should also be noted that if you do want to build a large org in this space, once you get to the large org phase, OpenPhil has historically been less happy to fund you (unless you’re also making AGI[1]).
This is not me being salty, the obvious response to “OpenPhil has historically not been happy to fund orgs trying to grow to larger numbers of employees” is “but what about OpenAI or Anthropic?” Which I think are qualitatively different than, say, Apollo.