“Directly Try Solving Alignment for 5 weeks” by Kabir Kumar

The Moonshot Alignment Program is a 5-week research sprint from August 2nd to September 6th, focused on the hard part of alignment: finding methods to get an AI to do what we want and not what don't want, which we have strong evidence will scale to superintelligence. You’ll join a small team, choose a vetted research direction, and run experiments to test whether your approach actually generalizes.

Mentors include: @Abram Demski @Cole Wyeth

Research Assistants include: Leonard Piff, Péter Trócsányi

Apply before July 27th. The first 300 applicants are guaranteed personalised feedback. 166 Applicants so far.

For this program, we have four main tracks:

1. Agent Foundations Theory: Build formal models of agents and value formation.
2. Applied Agent Foundations: Implement and test agent models.
3. Neuroscience-based AI Alignment: Design architectures inspired by how the brain encodes values.
4. Improved Preference Optimization: Build oversight methods that embed values deeply and scale [...]

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Outline:

(01:35) How does the program work?

(02:08) Eligibility

(02:50) Our Application Process

(02:57) Stage 1: Expression of Interest

(03:25) Stage 2: Knowledge Check

(03:57) Stage 3: Team Formation and Idea Submission

(04:31) Attend our Demo Day

(05:04) How much does it cost to attend the demo day?

(05:33) Testimonials

(05:38) Martin Leitgab

(06:30) Shruti Datta Gupta

(07:36) Abby Lupi

(08:34) Anya Decarlo

(09:17) Nataliia Povarova

(10:38) Luke Chambers

(11:12) James Hindmarch

(11:40) Areal (Ari) Tal

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First published:

July 21st, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/abd9ufFpLrn5kvnLn/directly-try-solving-alignment-for-5-weeks

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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