Alexa Pan

I've made a $1.5k offer to this project; @RenanAraujo will do the same. (@Austin could you possibly raise the maximum funding limit, just in case others are interested in going beyond the $3k that we agreed with Alexa?)

**Main points in favor of this grant**

Renan and I put out a call to an invite-only scholarship program, the "Aurora Scholarship," to 9 individuals recommended by a source we trust. We were aiming to support people who are nationals of or have lived in China with a $2,400-$4,800 scholarship for a research project in a topic related to technical AI safety or AI governance. The project should last for approximately 4-8 weeks (i.e. we aim to offer $600/week at 20h/week).

Our hope is that scholars might use the experience and signaling value of these projects to counterfactually advance through to the next stage in their chosen career pipeline (e.g., PhD acceptance, think-tank placement), and that this program will strengthen the Chinese AI safety community. The program is loosely inspired by this CAIS program (but note we're not affiliated with CAIS and this does not mean CAIS endorses this program), especially in the sense that it is a requirement to join the program that each scholar has to seek their own supervisor.

Alexa was one of our excellent applicants.

Matt Sheehan is a well-respected China analyst who obviously believes in this project. I'm looking forward to seeing how Alexa gets on, and am excited for her to benefit from mentor feedback and association.

**Donor's main reservations**

I feel ill-equipped to judge the object-level benefits (and therefore downsides) of AI governance projects related to China, which worries me a little. But it seems unlikely that a small project driven by a promising undergraduate (and Concordia affiliate) and mentored by a respected, mainstream, US-based China analyst could result in serious downside.

Targeting the Aurora Scholarship invitees in the way we have has greater possible downside. We think this is fairly low, and have taken steps to lower this further (e.g. by not including junior researchers currently located in China).

**Process for deciding amount**

In her application, Alexa suggested to us that this project would take "median 15h/week" for "4-6 weeks." I took the maximum of rounding up one of these numbers (for possible expenses/planning fallacy). Max($30 x 20 x 5, $30 x 15 x 6) = $3,000.

**Conflicts of interest**

None.