“ok, bite the bullet, and spend 6 months − 2 years training interested math/cs/etc students to be competent researchers”—but have they tried this with Terry Tao?
People have tried to approach top people in their field and offer them >$500k/yr salaries, though not at any scale and not to a ton of people. Mostly people in ML and CS are already used to seeing these offers and frequently reject them, if they are in academia.
There might be some mathematicians for whom this is less true. I don’t know specifically about Terence Tao. Sometimes people also react quite badly to such an offer and it seems pretty plausible they would perceive it as a kind of bribe and making such an offer could somewhat permanently sour relations, though I think it’s likely one could find a framing for making such an offer that wouldn’t run into these problems.
My takeaway from this datapoint is that people are motivated by status more than money. This suggests ramping up advocacy via a media campaign, and making alignment high-status among the scientifically-minded (or general!) populace.
That is indeed a potential path that I am also more excited about. There are potentially ways to achieve that with money, though most ways I’ve thought about are also very prone to distorting what exactly is viewed as high-status, and creating strong currents in the field to be more prestigious, legible, etc. However, my guess is there are still good investments in the space, and I am pursuing some of them.
I’d love to hear more about this (unless secrecy is beneficial for some reason). I’d also like to know if there’s any way for people to donate to such an effort.
Yes, I think reaching out to differentiated candidates (like TT) is at least worth trying, since if it doesn’t work the downside is bounded by the relatively small number of attempts you can make.
“ok, bite the bullet, and spend 6 months − 2 years training interested math/cs/etc students to be competent researchers”—but have they tried this with Terry Tao?
People have tried to approach top people in their field and offer them >$500k/yr salaries, though not at any scale and not to a ton of people. Mostly people in ML and CS are already used to seeing these offers and frequently reject them, if they are in academia.
There might be some mathematicians for whom this is less true. I don’t know specifically about Terence Tao. Sometimes people also react quite badly to such an offer and it seems pretty plausible they would perceive it as a kind of bribe and making such an offer could somewhat permanently sour relations, though I think it’s likely one could find a framing for making such an offer that wouldn’t run into these problems.
My takeaway from this datapoint is that people are motivated by status more than money. This suggests ramping up advocacy via a media campaign, and making alignment high-status among the scientifically-minded (or general!) populace.
That is indeed a potential path that I am also more excited about. There are potentially ways to achieve that with money, though most ways I’ve thought about are also very prone to distorting what exactly is viewed as high-status, and creating strong currents in the field to be more prestigious, legible, etc. However, my guess is there are still good investments in the space, and I am pursuing some of them.
I’d love to hear more about this (unless secrecy is beneficial for some reason). I’d also like to know if there’s any way for people to donate to such an effort.
Yes, I think reaching out to differentiated candidates (like TT) is at least worth trying, since if it doesn’t work the downside is bounded by the relatively small number of attempts you can make.