Open Philanthropy recommended three grants totaling $1,240,840 to AI Safety Support to support their collaboration with Stanford Existential Risks Initiative (SERI) on SERI’s Machine Learning Alignment Theory Scholars (MATS) program. MATS is an educational seminar and independent research program that aims to provide scholars with talks, workshops, and research mentorship in the field of AI alignment, and connect them with in-person alignment research communities.
These grants will support the MATS program’s fourth cohort. They follow Open Philanthropy’s November 2022 support for the previous iteration of MATS, and fall within its focus area growing and empowering the community of people focused on global catastrophic risk reduction. Open Philanthropy also made a separate grant to the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative for this cohort.