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:

• 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.)