Remmelt

This might be the last AI Safety Camp

Update Dec 4: Funds still needed for next month's stipends, plus salaries to run the 11th edition. Also, Zvi listed AISC at the top of his recommendations for talent funnel orgs. We are organising the 9th edition without funds. We have no personal runway left to do this again. We will not run the 10th edition without funding. In a nutshell: 1. Last month, we put out AI Safety Camp’s funding case. A private donor then decided to donate €5K. 2. Five more donors offered $7K on Manifund. For that $7K to not be wiped out and returned, another $21K in funding is needed. At that level, we may be able to run a minimal version of AI Safety Camp next year, where we get research leads started in the first 2.5 months, and leave the rest to them. 3. The current edition is off to a productive start! A total of 130 participants joined, spread over 26 projects. The projects are diverse – from agent foundations, to mechanistic interpretability, to copyright litigation. 4. Our personal runways are running out. If we do not get the funding, we have to move on. It’s hard to start a program again once organisers move on, so this likely means the end of AI Safety Camp. 5. We commissioned Arb Research to do an impact assessment. One preliminary result is that AISC creates one new AI safety researcher per around $12k-$30k USD of funding. How can you support us: * Spread the word. When we tell people AISC doesn't have any money, most people are surprised. If more people knew of our situation, we believe we would get the donations we need. * Donate. Make a donation through Manifund to help us reach the $28K threshold. Reach out to remmelt@aisafety.camp for other donation options.

198Jan 24, 2024

Remmelt

Message

Research coordinator of Stop/Pause area at AI Safety Camp.

See explainer on why AGI could not be controlled enough to stay safe:
lesswrong.com/posts/xp6n2MG5vQkPpFEBH/the-control-problem-unsolved-or-unsolvable

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If ‘bad guys’ don't pause, do you?

Imagine writing a policy for an AI company. The CEO trusts you and will approve your policy, if you show it's based on 8 premises: 1. AI can be scaled in capability. It can offer benefits and power to those who wield it. Also it could become unsafe for all...

Mar 224

Journalist's inquiry into a core organiser breaking his nonviolence commitment and leaving Stop AI

Some key events described in the Atlantic article: > Kirchner, who’d moved to San Francisco from Seattle and co-founded Stop AI there last year, publicly expressed his own commitment to nonviolence many times, and friends and allies say they believed him. Yet they also say he could be hotheaded and...

Dec 5, 202549

The AI bubble covered in the Atlantic

Here is an excerpt: America appears to be, at the moment, in a sort of benevolent hostage situation. AI-related spending now contributes more to the nation’s GDP growth than all consumer spending combined, and by another calculation, those AI expenditures accounted for 92 percent of GDP growth during the first...

Nov 11, 20254

AI Safety Camp 11

We are pleased to announce that the 11th version of the AI Safety Camp is now entering the team member application phase! Apply Now AI Safety Camp is a 3-month long online program from January to April 2026, where participants form teams to work on pre-selected AI Safety projects. We...

Nov 4, 20256

Heuristics for assessing how much of a bubble AI is in/will be

From journalist Brian Merchant: > Since ChatGPT’s viral success in late 2022, which drove every company within spitting distance of Silicon Valley (and plenty beyond) to pivot to AI, the sense that a bubble is inflating has loomed large. There were headlines about it as early as May 2023. This...

Oct 28, 20258

Designing for perpetual control

We don't have static software. We have a system which is dynamically learning, changing, rewriting code indefinitely. It's a perpetual motion problem we're trying to solve. In physics, you cannot create [a] perpetual motion device. But in AI, in computer science, we're saying we can create [a] perpetual safety device...

Oct 12, 20251

Evolution is dumb and slow, right?

Friends in technical safety tell me that evolution is a dumb and slow algorithm. Like, if you'd run an optimisation algorithm on a computer, why not pick one that's more sophisticated? Even just stochastic gradient descent? Surely, 'AGI' could design something much better than a genetic algorithm that selects for...

Sep 16, 202517

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Remmelt

Remmelt

Remmelt

This might be the last AI Safety Camp

MAGA speakers at NatCon were mostly against AI

Anthropic's leading researchers acted as moderate accelerationists

Funding case: AI Safety Camp 10

Remmelt

If ‘bad guys’ don't pause, do you?

Journalist's inquiry into a core organiser breaking his nonviolence commitment and leaving Stop AI

The AI bubble covered in the Atlantic

AI Safety Camp 11

Heuristics for assessing how much of a bubble AI is in/will be

Designing for perpetual control

Evolution is dumb and slow, right?

This might be the last AI Safety Camp

MAGA speakers at NatCon were mostly against AI

Anthropic's leading researchers acted as moderate accelerationists

Funding case: AI Safety Camp 10

If ‘bad guys’ don't pause, do you?

Journalist's inquiry into a core organiser breaking his nonviolence commitment and leaving Stop AI

The AI bubble covered in the Atlantic

AI Safety Camp 11

Heuristics for assessing how much of a bubble AI is in/will be

Designing for perpetual control

Evolution is dumb and slow, right?