Slightly hot take: Longtermist capacity/community building is pretty underdone at current margins and retreats (focused on AI safety, longtermism, or EA) are also underinvested in.
By "longtermist community building", I mean rather than AI safety. I think retreats are generally underinvested in at the moment.
I'm also sympathetic to thinking that general undergrad and high school capacity building (AI safety, longtermist, or EA) is underdone, but this seems less clear-cut.
I think this underinvestment is due to a mix of mistakes on the part of Open Philanthropy (and Good Ventures)[1] and capacity building being lower status than it should be.
Here are some reasons why I think this work is good:
It's very useful for there to be people who are actually trying really hard to do the right thing and they often come through these sorts of mechanisms. Another way to put this is that flexible, impact-obsessed people are very useful.
Retreats make things feel much more real to people and result in people being more agentic and approaching their choices more effectively.
Programs like MATS are good, but they get somewhat different people at a somewhat different part of the funnel, so they don't (fully) substitute.
A large part of why I'm writing this is to try to make this work higher status and to encourage more of this work. Consider yourself to be encouraged and/or thanked if you're working in this space or planning to work in this space.
I think these mistakes are: underfunding this work, Good Ventures being unwilling to fund some versions of this work, failing to encourage people to found useful orgs in this space, and hiring out many of the best people in this space to instead do (IMO less impactful) grantmaking. ↩︎
A large part of why I'm writing this is to try to make this work higher status and to encourage more of this work. Consider yourself to be encouraged and/or thanked if you're working in this space or planning to work in this space.
To add a second data point: I think effective community/capacity building can be both incredibly challenging and incredibly impactful. I respect the people who do CB well a lot, much more than the median AIS researcher I meet (especially since it requires pushing back against the default incentive gradients). I’m not sure how much this means to people in practice, but I think it’s worth putting on the public record anyways.
I think this is a great idea that would serve an urgent need. I'd urge to you do it in the near future.
1JohnofCharleston
Agree with both the OP and Habryka's pitch. The Meetup Organizers Retreat hosted at Lighthaven in 2022 was a huge inflection point for my personal involvement with the community.