Note: This grant was given as part of the experimental alignment microgrant program. Because this is a weird experimental grant program aiming to make lots of unusual bets, grantees are not allowed to use this grant as a credential when applying to any other grant, or job, or on their resume/linkedin/etc. This page exists because Manifund does not allow private grants. If you are a grantmaker or hiring manager, please disregard this grant when making decisions.
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AFFINE Event-Prep
ActiveGrant
$10,000raised
$10,000funding goal
what do you want to do
AFFINE is a month-long AI alignment seminar that provides space to genuinely grapple with the pre-paradigmaticity of the field. We believe that there are gaping holes in our understanding which will not be filled by tackling the crisp, legible problems currently available. That we need a holistic paradigm, and that there exists an incentive structure heavily tilted against the type of open-ended, highly illegible, highly confusion-aware research that could produce such a thing. We want to run more and better versions of this seminar, the second one being scheduled for January and we would like to spin up a longer fellowship driven by the same vision. In the long term we would like to build a hub and use this network to create and support a number of research organisations.
how are you planning to spend the money
Some next steps are; -Reach out to various mentors for involvement in the next seminar/fellowship -Figure out concrete steps for networking with academics -Reach out to other field-builders for various models -Write a public version of our retrospective -Write up better vision/TOC & funding pitches -Study Wentworth MATS program & MIRI workshops for insights -Followups with participants from seminar -Experiment with workshops / content on lab rats to see what effects it has on them This grant would allow the core team (Mateusz Bagiński, creator of AFFINE as well as Julia Persson and Noa "Ouro" Hölzer of Orthogonal) to focus on these tasks and get funding for the actual event. To this effect we would be paying ourselves minimum wage for two months.
what have you done in the past that proves you will be good at doing this? focus on substance, not credentials
We hosted one of these events a month ago in the Czech Republic with thirty fellows, mentors including Abram Demski, Richard Ngo, and Justin Shovelain, and a program aimed at producing deep models of various difficulties, frame-rejection and the mindset previously described. We held planned talks and workshops on four days of the week and field-relevant unconference activities on two, while giving the mentees resources for peer-tutoring, including a custom app. (More detail in our retrospective document attached) The reaction of participants, including visiting mentors to this first event and its cohort was overwhelmingly positive and we are in conversation with the PIBBSS organisers who are interested in collaborating with us.