Note that governance/policy jobs pay less than ML research/engineering jobs, so I expect GovAI, IAPS, and ERA, which are more governance focused, to have a lower stipend. Also, MATS is deliberately trying to attract top CS PhD students, so our stipend should be higher than theirs, although lower than Google internships to select for value alignment. I suspect that PIBBSS’ stipend is an outlier and artificially low due to low funding. Given that PIBBSS has a mixture of ML and policy projects, and IMO is generally pursuing higher variance research than MATS, I suspect their optimal stipend would be lower than MATS’, but higher than a Stanford PhD’s; perhaps around IAPS’ rate.
That said, maybe you are conceptualizing of an “efficient market” that principally values impact, in which case I would expect the governance/policy programs to have higher stipends. However, I’ll note that 87% of MATS alumni are interested in working at an AISI and several are currently working at UK AISI, so it seems that MATS is doing a good job of recruiting technical governance talent that is happy to work for government wages.
No, I meant that the correlation between pay and how-competent-the-typical-participant-seems-to-me is, if anything, negative. Like, the hiring bar for Google interns is lower than any of the technical programs, and PIBBSS seems-to-me to have the most competent participants overall (though I’m not familiar with some of the programs).
I don’t think it makes sense to compare Google intern salary with AIS program stipends this way, as AIS programs are nonprofits (with associated salary cut) and generally trying to select against people motivated principally by money. It seems like good mechanism design to pay less than tech internships, even if the technical bar for is higher, given that value alignment is best selected by looking for “costly signals” like salary sacrifice.
I don’t think the correlation for competence among AIS programs is as you describe.
Note that governance/policy jobs pay less than ML research/engineering jobs, so I expect GovAI, IAPS, and ERA, which are more governance focused, to have a lower stipend. Also, MATS is deliberately trying to attract top CS PhD students, so our stipend should be higher than theirs, although lower than Google internships to select for value alignment. I suspect that PIBBSS’ stipend is an outlier and artificially low due to low funding. Given that PIBBSS has a mixture of ML and policy projects, and IMO is generally pursuing higher variance research than MATS, I suspect their optimal stipend would be lower than MATS’, but higher than a Stanford PhD’s; perhaps around IAPS’ rate.
That said, maybe you are conceptualizing of an “efficient market” that principally values impact, in which case I would expect the governance/policy programs to have higher stipends. However, I’ll note that 87% of MATS alumni are interested in working at an AISI and several are currently working at UK AISI, so it seems that MATS is doing a good job of recruiting technical governance talent that is happy to work for government wages.
No, I meant that the correlation between pay and how-competent-the-typical-participant-seems-to-me is, if anything, negative. Like, the hiring bar for Google interns is lower than any of the technical programs, and PIBBSS seems-to-me to have the most competent participants overall (though I’m not familiar with some of the programs).
I don’t think it makes sense to compare Google intern salary with AIS program stipends this way, as AIS programs are nonprofits (with associated salary cut) and generally trying to select against people motivated principally by money. It seems like good mechanism design to pay less than tech internships, even if the technical bar for is higher, given that value alignment is best selected by looking for “costly signals” like salary sacrifice.
I don’t think the correlation for competence among AIS programs is as you describe.