Indeed. The program is a last-minute idea, and we considered waiting until next year for this reason; but it seemed better to get started. And, contrary to my initial fears, interest and applications seem good, so far.
The overton window has shifted on AI risk; this program would not have been planable a year ago. I feel a bad for the folks who are finding out about this late, and who would've wanted to come and now have to decide between breaking existing plans and waiting for a future year (if we run these future years); but it still seems good we're doing it now.
Why does this program rely on AI risk being within the Overton window? I would guess that the majority of people interested in this were already interested in AI risk before it went mainstream.
CFAR will be running a three week summer program this July for MIRI, designed to increase participants' ability to do technical research into the superintelligence alignment problem.
The intent of the program is to boost participants as far as possible in four skills:
The program will be offered free to invited participants, and partial or full scholarships for travel expenses will be offered to those with exceptional financial need.
If you're interested (or possibly-interested), sign up for an admissions interview ASAP at this link (takes 2 minutes): http://rationality.org/miri-summer-fellows-2015/
Also, please forward this post, or the page itself, to anyone you think should come; the skills and talent that humanity brings to bear on the superintelligence alignment problem may determine our skill at navigating it, and sharing this opportunity with good potential contributors may be a high-leverage way to increase that talent.