Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $2,047,268 to the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative to support their collaboration with the 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 talented scholars with talks, workshops, and research mentorship in the field of AI alignment, and connect them with the Berkeley alignment research community.
This grant will support the MATS program’s third cohort. This follows Open Philanthropy’s April 2022 support for the previous iteration of MATS, and falls within its focus area of potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence.