This is an interesting way to look at it. I’m not sure it makes total sense, because if some university that’s (relatively) bad at CS is bad because it doesn’t care as much, and accepts students who don’t care much either, then I don’t think you get a benefit out of going there just because they’re high-ranked overall. (E.g. maybe all the teaching faculty at U of M teach premeds more than future AI researchers, and don’t get support for pet projects)
In other words, you still have to evaluate cultural fit. I’m not even sure that relatively low ranking on CS is correlated with good cultural fit rather than anticorrelated.
I’m not sure it makes total sense, because if some university that’s (relatively) bad at CS is bad because it doesn’t care as much,
My guess is that the better universities are generally better b/c of network effects: better faculty want to be there, which means you get better grad students and more funding, which means you get better faculty, etc. Many of the lower tier CS departments at rich research universities still have a lot of funding and attention. My impression is also that almost no large research university “wants” to be bad at CS, it’s just pretty hard to overcome the network effects.
Also, in terms of research funding, the majority of it comes from outside grants anyways. And a good AI Alignment Professor should not have that much difficulty securing funding from EA.
This is an interesting way to look at it. I’m not sure it makes total sense, because if some university that’s (relatively) bad at CS is bad because it doesn’t care as much, and accepts students who don’t care much either, then I don’t think you get a benefit out of going there just because they’re high-ranked overall. (E.g. maybe all the teaching faculty at U of M teach premeds more than future AI researchers, and don’t get support for pet projects)
In other words, you still have to evaluate cultural fit. I’m not even sure that relatively low ranking on CS is correlated with good cultural fit rather than anticorrelated.
My guess is that the better universities are generally better b/c of network effects: better faculty want to be there, which means you get better grad students and more funding, which means you get better faculty, etc. Many of the lower tier CS departments at rich research universities still have a lot of funding and attention. My impression is also that almost no large research university “wants” to be bad at CS, it’s just pretty hard to overcome the network effects.
Also, in terms of research funding, the majority of it comes from outside grants anyways. And a good AI Alignment Professor should not have that much difficulty securing funding from EA.