Activity Update - November 2017

This post is part of our monthly activity update series. Each activity update briefly describes what we've been up to in the last month and, hopefully, helps to shed light on how our priorities shift over time. Note that some of our time each month will be spent investigating future project opportunities that may not be covered in these posts until our plans are more solid.

Accomplishments

• We have set up a Computing Grants program, designed to provide PhD students and post-docs with additional computing resources (GPUs) for their work on AI ethics, safety, or x-risk.

• Our Grants Program approved a $20k grant to the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in support of the conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society.

• We are now providing consistent purchasing support to the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), allowing FHI to quickly and smoothly buy supplies (e.g., textbooks, office snacks, etc.) in support of its mission.

• We hosted two "meet-and-greet" events to introduce ourselves to the EA community.

• We selected a candidate to trial for our Operations and Finance Manager position; she will also experiment with taking on some of our Project Management tasks.

• We selected one CPA to conduct our audit and found an accountant to work with BERI on ensuring our finances are in excellent shape.

Setbacks

• We continue to be delayed in posting a scholarship application form to our website.

Works in Progress

We are...

• Continuing to research our options for supporting several x-risk-motivated professors' work.

• In the process of trialing another promising ML engineer.