Jeffrey Ladish

Please note this grant has been approved but at the time of writing it has not been paid out.

• Jeffrey Ladish applied for funding to set up an organisation to do AI risk communications, with a focus on cybersecurity and alignment risks. His organisation, Palisade Research Inc., plans to conduct risk assessments and communicate those risks to the public, labs and the government. The theory of change is that communicating catastrophic risks to the public and key decision makers could increase political support for slowing down AI and other measures that might reduce AI risk. I am particularly excited about Jeffrey’s organisation demonstrating offensive AI cyber capabilities and other demos that help to communicate current risks from advanced AI systems.
• I am pretty excited about Jeffrey’s organisation. He has worked on information security in various organisations (including Anthropic), he seems well-networked amongst people working in think tanks and AI labs, and I like his public writing on AI risk. I am generally sceptical of people doing work related to policy without having first worked in lower stakes positions in similar areas first, but I thought that Jeffrey was orienting to the downsides very reasonably and doing the sensible things, like developing plans with more experienced policy professionals.