People
Updated 06/10/26By grantmaking.aicreator
Funding Details
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Project Details
Updated 06/10/26By grantmaking.aiUpdates
2024 February 9:
Got a $40k ACX grant for this. See https://manifund.org/projects/seed-fund-for-bo
2024 Jan 13:
The people I invited to the workshop all seem to have research funding anyway, and right now I'd be most interested in funding a second workshop on this topic that Davidad has asked me to plan. Mathematical Boundaries Workshop will be larger, 5-days, in Berkeley (LightHaven), and in April. Seeking up to $93,392 but probably more like $75k. Click here to email me, and I will send you the planning document and budget. (Or email me: chris@chrislakin.com)
2023 Dec:
We've received a $5k grant from LTFF for this workshop, and they have said it can go towards seed funding if we want.
Details
We're running https://formalizingboundaries.ai/
The workshop is already fully-funded and now we're also looking for a seed fund for empirical projects ideated at the workshop.
At the workshop, we will decide research directions and brainstorm empirical projects with the "chefs"— people who have thought about boundaries-related ideas a lot (Davidad, Critch, Garrabrant, etc.)— and assign them to the “cooks”, people who can execute on the projects and have the time to take on a new project.
Having pre-committed funding to support future work could be the difference between conversations stopping at the end of the workshop and individuals changing their research agendas to immediately pursue continuations of the workshop projects immediately without funder delays.
$40k? [1 month of funding x 4 cooks x $10k/mo]
We already have many great applications from potential "cooks".
Future workshops
It seems like there's far more interested people than we have space at this planning workshop, and we are also in the early stages of planning a larger boundaries workshop in Berkeley in Spring 2024. We are also exploring organizing other workshops with <related big research group>. We may use funds for running these workshops, too.
Who is on your team and what's your track record on similar projects?
Evan Miyazono:
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Just started https://atlascomputing.org/ which is meant to be the org the Open Agency Architecture.
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Led metascience and special projects at Protocol Labs for 6 years
- Evan’s team included davidad
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Recently organized a metascience workshop with the Santa Fe Institute: https://www.santafe.edu/events/accelerating-science-risks-incentives-and-rewards
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His team created and ran the Protocol Labs Research RFP program, hypercerts, Funding the Commons (conference series), The Arcological Association, gov4git, and was the first supporter of Discourse Graphs.
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PhD in Applied Physics at Caltech
Me:
- I wrote the compilation on boundaries when the topic wasn’t organized
- Currently funded for independent research on boundaries by a private donor
- Ideated this workshop
- Past experience in physics (CMU) and operations (eg ran ops for the ELK Winners’ Retreat)
- Funded for part-time rationality research by CFAR
- chris@chrislakin.com
I watched Chris's lecture at Foresight Vision Weekend 2023 last week, and found it was an interesting and novel way to think about agents. Very early stage, but I could believe that there's a chance that it helps me and others better understand coordination across a variety of agents (AIs, humans, orgs, etc). I also met Evan Miyazono at the same conference, and was impressed by his track record and energy (Evan and I scheduled time to chat about one of his proposals later this week)
Chris is also a friend of Rachel and I, which cuts both ways: I trust Chris as a person, but don't want to fund too much of this project myself to avoid conflicts of interest, thus the $1k donation for now.
@Austin Great!