I wonder if this is simply the result of the generally bad SWE/CS market right now. People who would otherwise be in big tech/other AI stuff, will be more inclined to do something with alignment.
This is roughly my situation. Waymo froze hiring and had layoffs while continuing to increase output expectations. As a result I/we had more work. I left in March to explore AI and landed on Mechanistic Interpretability research.
For any potential funders reading this: I’d be open to starting an interpretability lab and would love to chat. I’ve been full-time on MI for about 4 months—here is some of my work: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vGCWzxP8ccAfqsrS3/thoughts-about-the-mechanistic-interpretability-challenge-2
I have a few PhD friends who are working for software jobs they don’t like and would be interested in joining me for a year or longer if there were funding in place (even for just the trial period Marius proposes).
My very quick take is that interpretability has yet to understand small language models and this is a valuable direction to focus on next. (more details here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ESaTDKcvGdDPT57RW/seeking-feedback-on-my-mechanistic-interpretability-research )
For any potential cofounders reading this, I have applied to a few incubators and VC funds, without any success. I think some applications would be improved if I had a co-founder. If you are potentially interested in cofounding an interpretability startup and you live in the Bay Area, I’d love to meet for coffee and see if we have a shared vision and potentially apply to some of these incubators together.