I loved the simple core concept of a ‘catered hotel’ where select people can go to be supported in whatever efforts seem worthwhile. They are now broadening their approach, scaling up and focusing on logistical and community supports, incubation and a general infrastructure play on top of their hotel. This feels less unique to me now and more of a typical (EA UK) community play, so you should evaluate it on that basis.
Having got a read on the ground, the previous value proposition is still very much going strong, and there are no plans to remove that. As I understand it, the basic mid term plan is to have a mix of residencies and live-in mentor-ish people who are doing their own things, but add in some drives to pitch seasons for people with overlapping interests so that there’s greater opportunity for cross-pollination. There a bunch of other things that could come together as extras, but the team here is keen to keep the things the community knows and loves.
More significantly, the read on the ground I get is extremely positive, much more than previous years now that it’s got active full-time management by someone with relevant experience and drive. Multiple people have said things at least as positive as “this place is life changingly amazing, unblocked me from years long dips, helped me get way more productive, etc”, and it’s pretty clear that the arc of things is spinning up towards people who have much more and better outputs than in previous years.
Attila’s drive to clear the backlog of work needed to get the EA hotel organised, upgraded as a living space, and increased intentionality around selection+getting higher deal-flow so everyone here is agentic and competent is causing this place to spin up an increasing amount of momentum. I honestly think the EA hotel is one of the best EV places to support in the AI safety space right now. My guess is within 3 months we will see several counterfactual outputs which would individually justify the relatively small budget of ~$350k/year to support 20-30 people with a low-hassle and awesome environment.
(CoI: visiting and have friends here, but confident that I would make the same claims if this was not true)
Having got a read on the ground, the previous value proposition is still very much going strong, and there are no plans to remove that. As I understand it, the basic mid term plan is to have a mix of residencies and live-in mentor-ish people who are doing their own things, but add in some drives to pitch seasons for people with overlapping interests so that there’s greater opportunity for cross-pollination. There a bunch of other things that could come together as extras, but the team here is keen to keep the things the community knows and loves.
More significantly, the read on the ground I get is extremely positive, much more than previous years now that it’s got active full-time management by someone with relevant experience and drive. Multiple people have said things at least as positive as “this place is life changingly amazing, unblocked me from years long dips, helped me get way more productive, etc”, and it’s pretty clear that the arc of things is spinning up towards people who have much more and better outputs than in previous years.
Attila’s drive to clear the backlog of work needed to get the EA hotel organised, upgraded as a living space, and increased intentionality around selection+getting higher deal-flow so everyone here is agentic and competent is causing this place to spin up an increasing amount of momentum. I honestly think the EA hotel is one of the best EV places to support in the AI safety space right now. My guess is within 3 months we will see several counterfactual outputs which would individually justify the relatively small budget of ~$350k/year to support 20-30 people with a low-hassle and awesome environment.
(CoI: visiting and have friends here, but confident that I would make the same claims if this was not true)