FHI and CSER recently raised large academic grants to fund safety research, and may not be able to fill all their positions with talented researchers. Elon Musk recently donated $10m through the Future of Life Institute, and Open Phil donated a further $1m, which was their assessment of how much was needed to fund the remaining high-quality proposals. I’m aware of other major funders, including billionaires, who would like to fund safety researchers, but don’t think there’s enough talent in the pool. The problem is that it takes many years to gain the relevant skill set and few people are interested in the research, so even raising salaries won’t help significantly. Other funders are concerned that the research isn’t actually tractable, so the main priority is having someone demonstrate that progress can be made. Previous efforts to demonstrate progress have yielded large increases in funding.
But to be fair, that’s november 2015, so let me know if I should update.
I imagine that top level talent is hard to get but the amount of Phd students that have enough skills to be able to do Phd research in the area might be higher.
As far as I understand the open Phd positions are very competitive but I base my impression on a single conversation.
What’s the evidence that it’s mostly talent-constrained?
As stated here:
But to be fair, that’s november 2015, so let me know if I should update.
I don’t have any special insight.
I imagine that top level talent is hard to get but the amount of Phd students that have enough skills to be able to do Phd research in the area might be higher. As far as I understand the open Phd positions are very competitive but I base my impression on a single conversation.