Grant Application Simulator
Michaël Trazzi · Team 45
Submitted to Research Augmentation Hackathon. Sprint projects are early-stage work by participants, not Apart Research publications.
We build a VS Code extension to get feedback on AI Alignment research grant proposals by simulating critiques from prominent AI Alignment researchers and grantmakers.
Simulations are performed by passing system prompts to Claude 3.5 Sonnet that correspond to each researcher and grantmaker, based on some new grantmaking and alignment research methodology dataset we created, alongside a prompt corresponding to the grant proposal.
Results suggest that simulated grantmaking critiques are predictive of sentiment expressed by grantmakers on Manifund.
Reviews
Given how obscure the grant evaluation process can be and how much of an impact grants can have in facilitating AIS research, this is a fantastic and much needed tool. The tool is well built, with solid and well explained methodology. Would be particularly interested to see how this can be incorporated into different project stages. Well done!
Great project! I appreciate that you curated a dataset and that you integrated it with LLMs into a tool that is specifically useful for alignment researchers in such a short time! I would love to see further iterations on the user interface, as well as additional features that make parsing critiques/debates easier. This tool can be useful for red-teaming your alignment proposal as well as brainstorming, as the data obtained from mentor comments is quite valuable for priming the model correctly.
Given the frequent comments about lack of AI safety researchers relative to those working on capabilities, I think this tool would be an excellent way to improve quality of grants and therefore increase the number of researchers able to make progress on various safety agendas. I think your methodology is solid and you clearly have a deep understanding of how to engineer prompts effectively. As an additional next step, I’d love to see this be a tool that accepts Google Docs, as I assume this is where the majority of grant proposals gets written.
Love this! It seems especially useful for trying to raise the bar for projects and equalizing grant applications (making it less likely for a project to get accepted just because one person has some special insight for making a good application). This has many of the features for making it generally useful for producing better research agendas, better theories of change, prioritizing which project to pursue, and raising the bar for all research projects (for example, getting people to collaborate or get a mentor).
Cite this project
@misc{trazzi2024grant,
title = {{Grant Application Simulator}},
author = {Michaël Trazzi},
year = {2024},
month = jul,
note = {Submitted to Research Augmentation Hackathon, an Apart Research Sprint},
howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/grant-application-simulator}},
url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/grant-application-simulator}
}More from Research Augmentation Hackathon
- 1st place by peer reviewView project: AI Alignment Knowledge Graph
AI Alignment Knowledge Graph
CodeQuartz
We present a web based interactive knowledge graph with concise topical summaries in the field of AI alignement
- View project: Alignment Research Critiquer
Alignment Research Critiquer
Harshest Critics
Alignment Research Critiquer is a tool for early career and independent alignment researchers to have access to high-quality feedback loops
- View project: PurePrompt - An easy tool for prompt robustness and eval augmentation
PurePrompt - An easy tool for prompt robustness and eval augmentation
PurePrompt is an advanced tool for optimizing AI prompt engineering. The Prompt page enables users to create and refine prompt templates with placeholder variables. The Generate page automatically produces diverse test …