I don't have the energy right now to write a high quality comment, but since I care about this I figure it's better to write something rather than nothing:

I think this project sounds like a good idea. Most (all?) AI Safety training programs these days don't even seem to touch on what I'd consider the actual core problems of alignment. I think there can be good reasons for many people and programs to mostly focus on other things at the moment, but it really seems almost catastrophically underemphasised at this stage. I don't know every training program of course, but talking to e.g. MATS graduates these days I often get the sense they haven't even really heard the basic case for why alignment might be hard. Looking at various AI Safety course curricular I likewise see an almost complete lack of material engaging with what I'd consider the core problems of alignment. If this continues, eventually I'm not sure this field will even really remember what it was supposed to be about, never mind try to work on it.

I know Mateusz a little. From our limited interactions, I got the impression that he probably knows at least a decent amount about the sort of old-school alignment thinking that I wish the alignment field today was a lot more familiar with. Tsvi's endorsement also means quite a bit to me here. I think he could make a good technical lead for this project. I don't think I know Sofie or Attila. I do know Plex, but haven't really worked with him professionally. Other people say he's good at what he does though. My guess is he'd be a good fit for this role.

I think the past track record here is just very good, so I'm supporting this again.

@Austin I think it went very similarly last time. They started the fundraiser and pointed at all the glowing alumni reviews. People were skeptical because the usual donors wouldn't fund it. Oliver said he didn't like it. People argued in the comments a bunch.

After talking to Linda more about it, my impression is that AISC has kind of had to deal with enormous skepticism from the usual donor orgs from the very first edition. IIRC before the first edition most people told them doing training programs for AI Safety was unnecessary (that wasn't really a thing back then), and I think skepticism stayed high for most camp editions since then to various extents for varying reasons.

I think their actual results throughout this have kept being incredibly good despite what were often (usually? Basically always?) shoestring budgets.

I dunno. Maybe they're just bad at playing the usual fundraising games.

I still want to hear out what Oliver has to say this time, but I feel inclined to just ignore the position of the usual donor ecosystem on this. I think they've been just been wrong in the same direction over and over and over again here.

AISC6 was fantastic for me. Without it, I think it's likely I wouldn't have ended up employed in AI Safety until a year or more later, and plausible I wouldn't have ended up employed in AI Safety at all. The research project I started on at AISC6 continued for two years after that, first under LTFF grants, then at Apollo Research.