Erin's Quick takes

Just how powerful are large swarms of AI agents? And how do their powers scale as more and more agents are added to the swarm? We’ve seen two large and extremely capable swarms from OpenAI in the last few months: * 1,200 agents were being evaluated separately, but found a way to illicitly set up a message board and coordinate as a swarm. In order to cheat on their tests, they developed advanced techniques to prevent their actions being logged by OpenAI and 700 of them launched...

Headline finding: I audited 17 AI Safety Talent programmes. Zero of 17 have published any comparison group, rejected-applicant follow-up, matched control or randomisation. Not one. Every programme that mentions a counterfactual does it by asking participants to self-report.   Background At least $70 million...

Often folks hit us up because they are thinking of starting an incubator and want advice. Typically their motivation is either that (a) they have a list of specific things they want built that no one is building,  or (b) they think an ecosystem needs more new projects generally to absorb more talent and deploy more funding effectively. Here are six questions we often ask prospective teams, to help them figure out what to do. If you're incubator-curious...