AI Safety Reading Group at metauni [Retrospective]

Matthew Cameron Farrugia-Roberts

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$815raised

$1,000funding goal

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Summary of project. Metauni is an open 'metaverse university', a small community of scholars that meet in 3D virtual environments. From June 2022 to February 2024, myself and Dr. Daniel Murfet ran a weekly AI Safety Reading Group there. The reading group had 3 to 5 attendees each week, and occasionally guest presenters. We mainly discussed and critiqued technical papers on AI safety, though also sometimes philosophical papers or papers on AI ethics. A full list of readings is available at the group webpage.

Retrospective grant. I am applying for retrospective funding for this project as part of the EA Community Choice funding round. Since the reading group didn't have many attendees, I think it will draw limited funding. However, this project had a pretty sizable impact on at least my career, and I think also Daniel's and those of some of the other attendees. It helped our local community orient towards the field. I plan to participate in the Community Choice round and among other projects that have been impactful in my career I want to direct some of my funding towards this project because it had a comparable impact.

Use of funding. To be clear, the reading group is not currently active, and there are not currently plans to re-open it. Any funding will be shared between the organisers (myself and Daniel Murfet), and presumably contribute to their future projects. This is not about funding specific future projects nor reviving the metauni reading group, although the group may re-open organically at some point in the future (or it may not).

Team. The team comprises the following two reading group directors:

Matthew Farrugia-Roberts (me). I am a freelance AI safety researcher and incoming DPhil candidate at Oxford. I currently contract with Timaeus and the Krueger AI Safety Lab.
Daniel Murfet. Daniel is a mathematician at the University of Melbourne who researches theoretical foundations of interpretability and alignment of deep neural networks. Daniel also collaborates with Timaeus.

Most likely causes/outcomes of failure. This is not really applicable since the funding is retrospective.

Other sources of funding. The project has received no other funding and was entirely driven by the volunteer contributions of the participants.

donated $401

Matthew Cameron Farrugia-Roberts

2 months ago

As suggested in the description I am allocating $100 of my EA Community Choice funds to this project (+$100 of my own cash by mistake). My total EA Community Choice allocation was $400.

How I allocated my EA Community Choice funds: I initially planned to split my allocation among retrospective projects that have been impactful throughout my career. Unfortunately, many of the projects that have impacted my career are not represented on the platform. I reached out to some to encourage them to apply, but this didn't help---some did not respond, some considered applying but didn't get around to it, and some said they have other funding and so they didn't feel they needed to participate. So, I changed plans and decided to fund a mix of retrospective projects as well as promising prospective projects matching my interests and values, as follows:

I allocated $149 for the retrospective impact of listed projects on my career: 80kH ($49, expecting them to do well in matching) and this project ($100).
I allocated $101 to upskilling programs aimed at growing the AI Safety Research: Athena 2.0 $(81), MATS ($20, expecting them to do well in matching).
I allocated $70 to content creators in AI Safety and Animal Advocacy: Michaël Trazzi ($50), Digital Animal ($20).
I allocated $80 to infrastructure and events serving the AI Safety, AI Policy and Animal Advocacy communities: LEAH ($20), AIADM 2025 ($20), PauseAI ($20), Hive Slack ($20).

Cash donations: During the quadratic matching period I also donated $120 of my cash balance to various projects:

I donated $20 to EANZ in recognition of their community contributions such as offering their own 1:1 career coaching program.

I inadvertently donated an additional $100 to this project. This arose due to what appears to be a bug in self-donations whereby my cash balance was used instead of my charity balance the first time I tried to donate $100.
- Even though these funds will be returned to my cash balance if the project is funded, this is not a no-op primarily since it will have a small (though diminished) impact on the quadratic matching and since the project might not have reached minimum funding counterfactually.
- I am in discussion with Austin about revoking this donation, but in case it ends up staying, I apologise for the unintended disturbance to the matching and filtering procedures.

donated $401

Matthew Cameron Farrugia-Roberts

about 2 months ago

I donated to this project some of the funds that were returned to me from other EA Community Choice projects that didn't meet their minimum funding bar.

donated $40

Tom O’Haire

2 months ago

Happy to seed this project and try and help Matthew reach his minimum funding.

donated $250

Tom Burns

3 months ago

I attended and gave some talks at metauni. I think it is a great initiative. Both Matthew and Daniel put a lot of effort and time into the group, and I'm sure they will both make many more meaningful contributions.