I used to think that starting new AI safety orgs is not useful because scaling up existing orgs is better:
they already have all the management and operations structure set up, so there is less overhead than starting a new org
working together with more people allows for more collaboration
And yet, existing org do not just hire more people. After talking to a few people from AIS orgs, I think the main reason is that scaling is a lot harder than I would intuitively think.
larger orgs are harder to manage, and scaling up does not necessarily mean that much less operational overhead.
coordinating with many people is harder than with few people. Bigger orgs take longer to change direction.
reputational correlation between the different projects/teams
We also see the effects of coordination costs/"scaling being hard" in industry, where there is a pressure towards people working longer hours. (It's not common that companies encourage employees to work part-time and just hire more people.)
Thanks for writing this! I agree.
I used to think that starting new AI safety orgs is not useful because scaling up existing orgs is better:
And yet, existing org do not just hire more people. After talking to a few people from AIS orgs, I think the main reason is that scaling is a lot harder than I would intuitively think.
We also see the effects of coordination costs/"scaling being hard" in industry, where there is a pressure towards people working longer hours. (It's not common that companies encourage employees to work part-time and just hire more people.)