TL;DR: I think there likely are a lot of people who want to work on mechanistic interpretability projects but couldn’t get into AI safety camp, so I created a Discord server for people to organize themselves into such projects. I’m going to lead one of them.
Why?
Many people interested in mechanistic interpretability projects were unable to get into AI safety camp. According to Linda Lisenfors, one of the main bottlenecks was a lack of project proposals.
The most popular project at AI safety camp was on understanding search in Transformers, with 46 people selecting it as their first choice. This suggests significant interest in mechanistic interpretability projects.
Moreover, I think that many mechanistic interpretability projects are low-hanging... (read 345 more words →)
So update on this, I got busy with applications this last week and forgot to mail them about this but I just got a mail from ligthpeed saying I'm going to get a grant because Jaan Tallinn, has increased the amount he is distributing through Lightspeed Grants. (thought they say that "We have not yet received the money, so delays of over a month or even changes in amount seem quite possible")
(Edit: for the record I did end up getting funded).