Project summary

Gabe is requesting $5000 to pay for LLM compute to run experiments.

From Gabe's proposal on Nonlinear Network:

• I’m seeing around $5000 for AI model API compute funds (GPT-3.5/4, Claude, and PaLM) for multipolar coordination failure evaluations during the Existential Risk Alliance (ERA)’s summer research fellowship.
  • As a rough BOTEC, I might imagine running 12 experiments * 1024 data points per experiment * 8192 tokens per data point * $0.045 / 1000 tokens for GPT-4 = $4530.
  • The amount of funding is somewhat flexible. With less funding, I’d just be able to run fewer experiments or have to use worse models (like gpt-3.5-turbo). With more funding, I’d have more room to run more complicated experiments.
  • I commit to giving back any extra funds remaining at the end.
• I’ll be working on this project with mentorship from Alan Chan (Mila, Krueger Lab) and Jesse Clifton (CLR, Cooperative AI Foundation).
  • Unfortunately, ERA and these mentors do not have clear compute budgets they could allocate for my project, which is why I’m seeking funding.
  • That said, it’s probably not the worst if you didn’t fund this, as I might be able to get compute funds through them, it will just be more difficult.

What other funding is this person or project getting? Where else did this person or project apply for funding in the past?

Considering applying to an OpenAI grant program, or receiving compute from his lab

Main points in favor of this grant

• This grant is primarily a bet on Gabriel, based on his previous track record and his communication demonstrated in a 20min call (notes)
  • Started Stanford AI Alignment; previous recipient of OpenPhil fieldbuilding grant
  • His proposal received multiple upvotes from screeners on the Nonlinear Network
• I also appreciated the display of projects on his personal website; I vibe with students who hack on lots of personal side projects, and the specific projects seem reasonably impressive at a glance
• EA aligned

Main reservations

I don't feel particularly well qualified to judge the specifics of the proposed experiment myself, and am trusting that he and his colleagues will do a good job reporting the results

Process for deciding grant amount

Gabe requested $5000 for this project, but as he's planning to apply to several other sources of funding (and other Nonlinear Network grantmakers have not yet reached out), filling half of that with my regrantor budget seemed reasonable.

Conflicts of interest

None