Proposal Writing Guidelines
- It should be clear how the applicants think about the path to impact for their work. One of the most common failure modes for otherwise well-written proposals is that reviewers do not see how the project would be important from a societal perspective.
- Relatedly, it should be clear that the overall impact of the work can be expected to be positive from a societal perspective. Technical progress can come with both risks and benefits, and our mission is to support research that will improve the cooperative intelligence of advanced AI for the benefit of all. This means that we are focused on funding research that we believe will contribute to differential progress on safe and beneficial AI.
- The proposal should be as clear as possible about what concretely would be done, with a clear description of approach and methods. (We recommend that applicants consider the Heilmeier Catechism while writing their proposal.) If the description is too high-level or vague, we are unable to evaluate the merits of the proposal. Of course, the pre-proposal is expected to be less detailed than the full proposal but it will still be important to demonstrate in the first application stage that you have a concrete plan for what you would like to do and how.
- The proposal should include a comparison of the proposed work to other approaches and previous work. We aim to fund work that would clearly advance the field compared to existing literature.
- If you have several ideas, we strongly recommend that you submit them as separate proposals. Proposals that contain several projects that are not very closely connected tend to be rejected.
