AI Safety Europe Retreat 2023 Retrospective

Update: We did a follow-up survey 4 months after the retreat, asking participants what impact the retreat had on them. Here is a summary of the responses:

• 36 people responded (~54% of participants)
• Personal prioritization
  • 7 people reported their prioritization which area to work in was influenced by the retreat
    • One person quit their previous job to do a career transition to AI safety
    • One person decided to keep working on their current topic rather than switch as they had considered before
    • One person started to work on a research topic they wouldn’t have focused on otherwise
• Connections
  • 26 people mentioned they made connections they found useful, e.g. for research discussions. 
  • 7 people started research collaborations with people from the retreat
• Applying for training programs and funding
  • 5 people applied to SERI MATS as a result of the retreat
    • 4 people got accepted into the online training program
    • 2 people got accepted into the in-person research program
  • 4 people applied for funding (1 accepted, 1 rejected, 2 unclear)
  • One person became a teaching assistant for the ML safety course
• Concrete projects
  • At least 2 people took the AGISF 201 course
  • 4 people started field-building projects
  • 3 people wrote a post, and one person created a youtube channel
    • One is unsure whether their post was a result of the retreat
    • For one it was their first ever post
• Other/Miscellaneous
  • 3 people reported the retreat didn’t change much for them personally, but they think they were able to help others
    • All three were mentioned by others in the feedback as being particularly helpful
  • 13 people said they got a better picture of the AI safety landscape in general
  • 6 people reported they got a motivation boost from feeling part of a community of like-minded people
  • 3 people mentioned they went to EAG London because of the retreat
  • One person shifted focus within their area of work
  • One person got useful experimental results they think they wouldn’t have gotten without the input from the retreat

(Note that the survey consisted of a free text field, and the categories I made up for summarizing the results are pretty subjective. Also note that some people mentioned that they started projects or applied for things, but would have done so even without the retreat. I did not include those in my count.)

I think these results are really helpful to improve the picture of how such a retreat is valuable for people!

The biggest surprise for me is the amount of tangible results (research collaborations, getting into SERI MATS, concrete projects, career changes) that came out of the retreat. There were 9 people who said in the feedback form that they want to start a project as a result of the retreat (the form they filled out right at the end of the retreat). I would have guessed that maybe 5 would actually follow through after the initial motivation directly after the retreat has worn off. And I think that would have been a very good result already. Instead, it was more than 9 people who started projects after the retreat!

I still have the intuition that the more vague effects of the retreat (such as feeling part of a community) are really important, potentially more so than the tangible outcomes. And these vague things are probably not measured very well by a survey that asks “What impact did the retreat have on you?”, because it is just easier to remember concrete than vague things.

Overall, these survey results make me even more excited about this kind of AI safety retreat!

This is awesome - thanks for running this and sharing your experience!

This seems cool, thanks for running it!

What was the primary route to value of this retreat in your opinion? I'd be curious to know whether it was mainly about providing community and thus making participants more motivated, or if there were concrete new collaborations or significant individual updates derived from interactions at this retreat.

Question number 2: Did you have any processes in place to keep the epistemic standards/content quality high? If so, what were those? Or were these concerns implemented in the selection process itself (if there was any)?

I've heard at least from one AIS expert (researcher & field-builder) that they were concerned about a lot of new low-quality AIS research emerging in the field, creating more "noise". 

Even if that is not a concern, one can risk distracting people from pursuing high-impact research paths if persuasive lower-quality ones are presented (and there is an added social pressure/dynamics at play).*

From your results, it seems like this was not the case, so I'm very curious to hear the secret recipe to potentially adapt a similar structure :) In theory, I'm all for the unconference format (and other democratic initiatives) but I can't help to worry about the risks related to giving up quality control.

*- I know it can be hard to assess promising vs dead-end directions in AIS.
 

Such an interesting project! Thank you for organising it and sharing your findings.

The part that I was the most surprised about in that half of the participants were AIS researchers already working in the field. Do you know what their main motivation was behind joining the event? (Also happy to hear it directly from AIS researchers who attended the unconference and happen to see this comment!)

The reason I'm surprised is due to the following assumption about such researchers (simplified and exaggerated for the sake of clarity): 

They already are connected to other researchers or can easily connect to them and exchange high-quality ideas e.g. in London (since we are talking about researchers in Europe) -- What motivates them to attend an unconference in Germany instead, especially with a lot of junior people (who might have a lot of terrible/obvious ideas)?