The way it’s set up doesn’t make clear to applicants just how hard it is to get funded there
Is Manifund overpromising in some way, or is it just that other funders like OP/SFF don’t show you the prospective/unfunded applications? My sense is the bar on getting significant funding on Manifund is not that different than the bar for other AIS funders, with some jaggedness depending on your style of project. I’d argue the homepage sorted by new/closing soon actually does quite a good job of showing what gets funded and the relative difficulty of doing so.
Many of the best regranters seem inactive, and some of the regranter choices are very questionable.
I do agree that our regrantors are less active than I’d like; historically, many of the regrantor grants go out in the last months of the year as the program comes to an end.
On matters of regrantor selection, I do disagree with your sense of taste on eg Leopold and Tamay; it is the case that Manifund is less doom-y/pause-y than you and some other LW-ers are. (But fwiw we’re pretty pluralistic; eg, we helped PauseAI with fiscal sponsorship through last year’s SFF round.) Furthermore, I’d challenge you to evaluate the regrantors by their grants rather than their vibe; I think the one grant Leopold made was pretty good by many lights; and Tamay hasn’t made a grant yet.
We are also open to bringing on other regrantors, and have some budget for this—if you have candidates who you think would do a better job, please do suggest them!
So, kinda, imo, though not too badly. For other funds, you’re going to get evaluated by someone who has the ability to fund you. On manifund, there’s a good chance that none of the people with budgets will evaluate your application, I think? Looking at the page you mention, it’s ~2/3 unfunded (which is better than I was tracking so some update on that criticism) even considering about half of them are only partly funded (and a fair few just a trivial amount). I think if you scroll around you can get a sense of this, but it’s not highlighted or easily available as a statistic (I just had to eyeball it, and will only be getting open apps rather than the more informative closed stats). Probably putting the stats for how many% of requested funding projects tend to get somewhere + listing on the make application page something about how this gets put in front of people with budgets fixes this?
I do agree that our regrantors are less active than I’d like; historically, many of the regrantor grants go out in the last months of the year as the program comes to an end.
Right.. seems suboptimal to have an invisible to applicants spike in probability of getting funded? What do you think of the idea of “request custom LLM selected newsletter” feature and ask regrantors to write a paragraph about the kinds of things they’d like to hear about when they sign up?
I do disagree with your sense of taste on eg Leopold and Tamay
This could get pretty involved re Leopold as it gets a bit into strategic considerations which probably fits best in an interactive setting[1], but Tamay’s lack of giving out funds is not all that reassuring given his terrifyingly bad takes on strategy should be and actions to match. Maybe read through this https://www.mechanize.work/blog/technological-determinism/ and model what AI general enough to automate the entire economy does with humans afterwards, given anything like current levels of civilizational competence at alignment and governance.
We are also open to bringing on other regrantors, and have some budget for this—if you have candidates who you think would do a better job, please do suggest them!
Yeah! Here’s some of the people who first spring to mind as having a strong grasp of the biggest challenges around alignment and afaik aren’t purely focused on their own agenda include+I expect to grant to things I’m at all hopeful about+aren’t already well placed to direct abundant funding already.
I’m also not super impressed with his grants, they don’t seem awful, but not particularly high impact per dollar for some pretty large grants to already well funded people. I’d be curious to see a retrospective on the $400k grant he gave two years ago and see how much came of that.
Thanks for the review! Speaking on Manifund:
Is Manifund overpromising in some way, or is it just that other funders like OP/SFF don’t show you the prospective/unfunded applications? My sense is the bar on getting significant funding on Manifund is not that different than the bar for other AIS funders, with some jaggedness depending on your style of project. I’d argue the homepage sorted by new/closing soon actually does quite a good job of showing what gets funded and the relative difficulty of doing so.
I do agree that our regrantors are less active than I’d like; historically, many of the regrantor grants go out in the last months of the year as the program comes to an end.
On matters of regrantor selection, I do disagree with your sense of taste on eg Leopold and Tamay; it is the case that Manifund is less doom-y/pause-y than you and some other LW-ers are. (But fwiw we’re pretty pluralistic; eg, we helped PauseAI with fiscal sponsorship through last year’s SFF round.) Furthermore, I’d challenge you to evaluate the regrantors by their grants rather than their vibe; I think the one grant Leopold made was pretty good by many lights; and Tamay hasn’t made a grant yet.
We are also open to bringing on other regrantors, and have some budget for this—if you have candidates who you think would do a better job, please do suggest them!
Thanks for engaging!
So, kinda, imo, though not too badly. For other funds, you’re going to get evaluated by someone who has the ability to fund you. On manifund, there’s a good chance that none of the people with budgets will evaluate your application, I think? Looking at the page you mention, it’s ~2/3 unfunded (which is better than I was tracking so some update on that criticism) even considering about half of them are only partly funded (and a fair few just a trivial amount). I think if you scroll around you can get a sense of this, but it’s not highlighted or easily available as a statistic (I just had to eyeball it, and will only be getting open apps rather than the more informative closed stats). Probably putting the stats for how many% of requested funding projects tend to get somewhere + listing on the make application page something about how this gets put in front of people with budgets fixes this?
Right.. seems suboptimal to have an invisible to applicants spike in probability of getting funded? What do you think of the idea of “request custom LLM selected newsletter” feature and ask regrantors to write a paragraph about the kinds of things they’d like to hear about when they sign up?
This could get pretty involved re Leopold as it gets a bit into strategic considerations which probably fits best in an interactive setting[1], but Tamay’s lack of giving out funds is not all that reassuring given his terrifyingly bad takes on strategy should be and actions to match. Maybe read through this https://www.mechanize.work/blog/technological-determinism/ and model what AI general enough to automate the entire economy does with humans afterwards, given anything like current levels of civilizational competence at alignment and governance.
Edit: to show this is a widely held view, note that one of the most highly rated short forms recently was this https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DFX9MzRjsnvRFLTvt/jan_kulveit-s-shortform?commentId=vsu3RzANmkPwDyw7Z which calls them out very harshly, with agreement from commentors.
Yeah! Here’s some of the people who first spring to mind as having a strong grasp of the biggest challenges around alignment and afaik aren’t purely focused on their own agenda include+I expect to grant to things I’m at all hopeful about+aren’t already well placed to direct abundant funding already.
@Steven Byrnes, Sam Eisenstat, @Vivek Hebbar, @Ramana Kumar, @johnswentworth @Richard Ngo, @Vladimir_Nesov, @steven0461.
Happy to have a call if that sounds fun to you!
I’m also not super impressed with his grants, they don’t seem awful, but not particularly high impact per dollar for some pretty large grants to already well funded people. I’d be curious to see a retrospective on the $400k grant he gave two years ago and see how much came of that.
Also, updated my description to prioritise better given updates about funding stats from looking better more recently.