MATS Spring 2024 Extension Retrospective

x This website requires javascript to properly function. Consider activating javascript to get access to all site functionality. MATS Spring 2024 Extension Retrospective — LessWrong AI Alignment Fieldbuilding MATS Program Postmortems & Retrospectives AI Personal Blog 27

 MATS Spring 2024 Extension Retrospective 

 by HenningB , Matthew Wearden , Cameron Holmes , Ryan Kidd 12th Feb 2025 18 min read 1 27

 Introduction and summary

 This retrospective focuses on the 4-month MATS extension phase (referred to as "MATS 5.1") that ran from April 1 to July 25, 2024, and presents findings gathered from an end-of-extension survey as well as follow-up interviews and surveys ~5 months after the program.

 Main changes from the 4.1 to 5.1 extension phase:

 Cohort grew from 26 to 36 scholars split across London, Berkeley and remote participants;
 MATS formalized research management for the London cohort and grew the team to 2 FTEs;
 The cohort visited Google DeepMind's London offices;
 The London team organized Tuesday lightning talks from scholars and MATS staff.
 Key takeaways from MATS extension impact:

 Research success: 75% of scholars published results in some form (paper, LW/AF post, codebase), of which 57% got accepted to a conference.
 Career transitions: 61% of scholars are currently working full-time on AI safety within 5 months of MATS, 22% are doing some safety related work;
 33% currently pursue independent research, 6% are working at technical safety orgs, 6% are currently upskilling in industry (non AIS), 22% are pursuing a PhD, and 17% have not found employment yet (as of December '24);
 One scholar co-founded a new safety-focused organization ( Decode Research );
 We found no clear successes where someone planning to join a frontier lab actually achieved this, although most scholars aimed for this.
 
 Research management: Formalized research management for London cohort and grew the team to 2 FTEs;
 All scholars received regular research management and largely reported this as very helpful;
 Compared to the main program, RM was more helpful during the extension. This was substantially influenced by the decreased mentor engagement and increased independence scholars are expected to have during this phase of the program.
 
 Extension program Overall, scholars were very happy with program and the services and environment provided by MATS. Many highlighted that it was one of the best professional experiences they had.
 No scholar experienced a major challenge or inconvenience from the program, but some encountered challenges related to motivation and personal productivity throughout the extension.
 Almost all scholars were motivated to pursue the extension due to excitement to continue their research - they generally felt that they had just started to build momentum on their research during the 10 weeks of the main program, but were far from having strong results for publication. The extension provided them with a vehicle to carry t

... (truncated, 31 KB total)