Andrei Alexandru

Grant to cover fees for a master's program in machine learning.

We’re funding Andrei Alexandru to pursue an ML master’s from Cambridge. Andrei has previously done mostly general software engineering and is looking to pivot into AI, and ML specifically, in order to eventually work on AI safety. I’m generally in favor of funding most applications of this form—someone aligned wants funding to skill up/get a credential in ML—and my evaluation of this application didn’t end up very far from that prior.

Andrei is clearly interested and engaged in AI safety—he previously received a grant from Open Philanthropy to self-study AI—but isn’t yet very knowledgeable or experienced. In my opinion, I think it’s worth giving him the opportunity to gain that knowledge and experience; I think AI safety absolutely needs more researchers right now, there’s a reasonable chance Andrei ends up in a position to do good work, and I didn’t think there were any strongly negative signs that might suggest that Andrei would end up negatively affecting the field.