If I were building a grantwriting bootcamp, my primary concerns would be:

• Where will successful grantees work?
  • I've found that independent researchers greatly benefit from a shared office space and community, for social connection, high-quality peer feedback, and centralizing operations costs.
  • Current AI safety offices seem to be overflowing. We likely need further, high-capacity AI safety offices to support the influx of independent researchers from Open Phil's RFPs.
  • I think that, in general, employment in a highly effective organization is more impactful than independent research for the majority of projects and researchers. While I greatly support the new Open Phil RFPs, I hope that more of their grants go towards setting up highly effective organizations, like nonprofit FROs, that can absorb and scale talent.
  • I see the primary benefit of the MATS extension program as a means of providing further research mentorship (albeit with more accountability and autonomy than the main program) with longer time horizons to complete research projects. The infrastructure we provide is quite significant and increasing the number of independent researchers without also scaling long-term support systems will likely not see optimal results.
• How will successful grantees obtain mentorship and high-quality feedback loops?
  • Even with the optimal project proposal, emerging researchers seem to benefit substantially from high quality mentorship, particularly over the course of a research project. I do not believe that all of this support should be front-loaded.
  • I would support an accompanying long-term peer support or mentorship program after the grantwriting bootcamp. I apologize if you were already planning this!
• Who will employ grantees on the conclusion of their research?
  • This is a significant question to MATS as well. I currently believe that high-quality research during the program is a strong enough output alone to justify the cost. However, ideally, most MATS alumni would find employment post-program. The main roadblocks to this employment seem to be software engineering skills (which points to ARENA-like coding bootcamps as a solution) and high-quality peer-reviewed publications (which usually need strong mentorship).
  • At the moment, I think "better grant proposals" is not a significant bottleneck to MATS alumni getting jobs. Rather, I think coding skills and high quality publications are the limiting factors. Also, I think there are far too few jobs to go around compared to the scale of the AI safety problem, so I also support more startup accelerators.

This seems like a great initiative! However, I don't expect this "grantwriting bootcamp" model to benefit the majority of MATS alumni compared to:

• Longer duration, more resourced independent research programs like the MATS extension program, Constellation Visiting Fellows Program, and the CHAI Research Fellowship that provide high-quality mentorship and job security for 6-12 months;
• Dedicated start-up incubator programs like Catalyze Impact, Entrepeneur First def/acc, and Y Combinator that provide seed funding, co-founder matching, and start-up advice;
• Longer duration, more established academic PhD/Postdoc programs that provide high-quality mentorship and legible credentials, e.g. via the Vitalik Buterin PhD Fellowship in AI Existential Safety and labs like UCB CHAI, NYU ARG, MIT AAG, Mila, KASL, MIT Tegmark Group, etc.

I can't speak for the other AI safety research programs on your list, but from my experience at MATS, alumni are principally worried about (in order):

1. Software engineering skills to pass AI lab coding tests;
2. High-quality peer-reviewed publications at top ML conferences to get into AI lab research jobs or top PhD programs;
3. Further high-quality mentorship;
4. Further connections to research collaborators.

In the past, acceptance into the MATS extension program literally required submitting a grant proposal and receiving external funding, generally from the LTFF or Open Phil. On average, 81% of alumni who apply have received LTFF or Open Phil grants (or equivalent AI lab contracting roles) for independent research post-program, even without the current (large) RFPs! Our Research Management staff are trained to help scholars submit AI safety grant proposals and we require all scholars to complete a Research Plan mid-program that doubles as a grant proposal. I think that the optimal program to help most MATS alumni looks less like a "grantwriting bootcamp" (though I'm sure some will benefit) and more like the programs I listed above. That said, I think the grantwriting bootcamp model will certainly benefit some early career researchers. I'm happy to call and chat more about this if you like!

Also, Apollo Research and Leap Labs grew out of the MATS London Office (what later became LISA). I realize this was an AI safety office, not an EA office, but it feels significant.

Yep, seems important. But I don't think this is particularly salient to the topic of the post: changes to AI safety priorities based on the new inference scaling paradigm.

Yeah, we deliberately refrained from commenting much on the talent needs for founding new orgs. Hopefully, we will have more to say on this later, but it feels somewhat pinned to AI safety macrostrategy, which is complicated.

Cheers, Jamie! Keep in mind, however, that these are current needs, and teenagers will likely be facing a job market with future needs. As we say in the report:

...predictions about future talent needs from interviewees didn’t consistently point in the same direction.

Cheers, Nick! We decided to change the title to "retrospective" based on this and some LessWrong comments.