This seems like it could be useful!
As you've identified, databases of this kind often run into the problem of becoming outdated. For a similar project, EA houses, I wrote a script which automatically sorts the most recently edited entries to the top. If you allow people to edit the sheet, this allows people to easily bump their entry, ensuring that at least the most recent entries are still active. I'd be happy to implement this script on your sheet if you give the email I'm DMing to you access.
I also suggest anyone filling out this sheet to check out aisafety.community for a list of places to join, the AI Safety Accountability Program especially seems relevant. And as well as signing up, take the initiative to reach out to people and organize! Early-stage career development is bottlenecked by people who make small events, calls, and reading groups happen.
Great idea!
So my intuition is that letting people edit a file that is publicly linked is inviting a high probability of undesirable results (like accidental wipes, unnoticed changes to the file, etc). I'm open to looking in to this if the format gains a lot of traction and people find it very useful. For the moment, I'll leave the file as-is so no one's entry can be accidentally affected by someone else's edits. Thank you for the offer though!
Yeah, that is a risk.
Have you checked out ASAP? Seems pretty related
https://airtable.com/shrhjo857neCToCNW/tblXj7gik84xGIZly/viwaKxHhBEmIyEcSr?blocks=hide
https://airtable.com/shrhjo857neCToCNW/tblXj7gik84xGIZly/viwB4nnuzhGLAEONY?blocks=hide
https://asap-homepage.notion.site/asap-homepage/Home-b38ba079d3dd4d258baa7cd1ae4eb68f
Oh my, this looks really great. I suspect between this and the other list of AIS researchers, we're all just taking different cracks at generating a central registry of AIS folk so we can coordinate at all different levels on knowing what people are doing and knowing who to contact for which kind of connection. However, maintaining such an overarching registry is probably a full time job for someone with high organizational and documentation skills.
Yup, another instance of this is the longtermist census, that likely has the most entries but is not public. Then there's AI Safety Watch, the EA Hub (with the right filters), the mailing list of people who went through AGISF, I'm sure SERI MATS has one, other mailing lists like AISS's opportunities one, other training programs, student groups, people in various entries on aisafety.community...
Yeah, there's some organizing to do. Maybe the EA forum's proposed new profile features will end up being the killer app?
Are you an independent AI Safety Researcher who would like to get in touch with other people in the same position? Fill out your location, work details, and collaboration interests, and you'll be added to a public google sheets file where Independent AI Safety Researchers can more easily get in touch with each other.
Here you can browse the entries so far. In a couple of months I'll lock the file and the form, cause there is no updating mechanism for old entries. If the concept of this registry is wildly successful, I'll look into a more persistent format at that point.
Enjoy!