The arguments/evidence in this post seem true and underrated to me, and I think more people should come work with us.
In particular, I also have updated upward on how impactful the job is over the last year. It does really seem to me like each grantmaker enables a ton of good projects. Here’s an attempt to make more concrete how much is enabled by additional grantmakers: If Jake hadn’t joined OP, I think we would our interp/theory grants would have been fewer in number and less impactful, because I don’t know those areas nearly as well as Jake does. Jake’s superior knowledge improves our grantmaking in these areas in multiple ways:
Better sourcing: Jake’s involvement meant that the proposals in these areas that were even available to us to evaluate were much better. His contributions to the interp/theory sections of the RFP meant the incoming proposals were higher-quality than if I had attempted to write them, and he had good suggestions/steers for grant applicants that I couldn’t have offered. He was also able to proactively ideate and realize projects that I wouldn’t have thought of or wouldn’t have had time for.
More grants, in more varied subareas: because Jake knows those areas better, he can evaluate proposals faster and is more comfortable arguing for/defending these grants than I am. This allows us to make more, and more varied, grants in those areas.
[The obvious one] Jake has better discernment among proposals in these areas than I do, which straightforwardly increases the impact of our grantmaking.
I think there are probably more buckets of similar scale/impact grantmaking to interp and theory that we’re currently neglecting. We need to hire more people to open up these new vistas of TAIS grantmaking, each of which will contain not just mediocre/marginal grants, but also some real gems! I think this dynamic is often underappreciated; additional grantmakers take ownership for new areas, rather than just helping us make better choices on the margin.
I also think that Jake obviously had way more impact on theory/interp than if he had done direct work. He funded dozens of projects by capable researchers, many of whom wouldn’t have worked on AI safety otherwise. I think most TAIS researchers aren’t taking this nearly seriously enough, and I think the case for grantmaking roles looks very strong in light of this.
(I am also a grantmaker at Coefficient/OP)
The arguments/evidence in this post seem true and underrated to me, and I think more people should come work with us.
In particular, I also have updated upward on how impactful the job is over the last year. It does really seem to me like each grantmaker enables a ton of good projects. Here’s an attempt to make more concrete how much is enabled by additional grantmakers: If Jake hadn’t joined OP, I think we would our interp/theory grants would have been fewer in number and less impactful, because I don’t know those areas nearly as well as Jake does. Jake’s superior knowledge improves our grantmaking in these areas in multiple ways:
Better sourcing: Jake’s involvement meant that the proposals in these areas that were even available to us to evaluate were much better. His contributions to the interp/theory sections of the RFP meant the incoming proposals were higher-quality than if I had attempted to write them, and he had good suggestions/steers for grant applicants that I couldn’t have offered. He was also able to proactively ideate and realize projects that I wouldn’t have thought of or wouldn’t have had time for.
More grants, in more varied subareas: because Jake knows those areas better, he can evaluate proposals faster and is more comfortable arguing for/defending these grants than I am. This allows us to make more, and more varied, grants in those areas.
[The obvious one] Jake has better discernment among proposals in these areas than I do, which straightforwardly increases the impact of our grantmaking.
I think there are probably more buckets of similar scale/impact grantmaking to interp and theory that we’re currently neglecting. We need to hire more people to open up these new vistas of TAIS grantmaking, each of which will contain not just mediocre/marginal grants, but also some real gems! I think this dynamic is often underappreciated; additional grantmakers take ownership for new areas, rather than just helping us make better choices on the margin.
I also think that Jake obviously had way more impact on theory/interp than if he had done direct work. He funded dozens of projects by capable researchers, many of whom wouldn’t have worked on AI safety otherwise. I think most TAIS researchers aren’t taking this nearly seriously enough, and I think the case for grantmaking roles looks very strong in light of this.