Show HN: Cat's Grant (experimental grant for ML research)

tldr:

  - you get paid to do your own research and report to me
  - you keep IP/ownership rights
  - 10 months duration
  - choose a grant size of $10k, $50k or $100k total (paid in monthly chunks)
  - Apply by sending an email to not_a_cat@fastmail.com

How it works: You specify the grant size when applying: 10k, 50k and 100k. This total amount will be distributed over a period of 10 months. I will review each application within 1 week. The deadline to apply is June 9. The start date is flexible and can be the start of June, July, August or September. The total budget I will allocate to this is around 100-200k

I haven't yet made a proper contract reviewed by lawyers. If interest is strong enough, I will do it and try hard to keep the spirit of what is said here. The contract will be under Swiss law.

Rationale: I get to meet cool people, promote and follow cool research. You get to do the research you want with little red tape (I'll be the sole decision maker for applications. Paperwork will be done with the help of other people).

Application process: You choose the grant size you apply for. You can apply to multiple ones at the same time. Then, you may be accepted for one grant option or rejected for all. The process has 3 stages:

  - Email application
  - First screening call
  - Second call with more in-depth questions

If you complete the 3 steps, you are accepted in the grant program.

Reporting requirements: You are expected to produce the following:

  - A weekly email report that can be as short as a single sentence (meant as a pulse that you are still here)
  - A monthly research update that has to be public, in the format you want (github file, blog post…)
  - Do a monthly call with me, discussing the monthly research update

Payment schedule: One payment of 10% of the total amount will be made at the end of each month while the grant is active. The payment of the first month will be made early, upon acceptance. The grant may be canceled if the reporting and effort is insufficient. The bar for this will be reasonably low. Effort and time spent will be considered good enough for keeping the Grant active.

Research directions: You are free to decide what topic to research. Reading and studying during the research is considered normal. I will try to be helpful and suggest research directions and ideas, although I won't impose anything specific. I will only consider applications in the domains of Machine Learning, Deep Learning and AI broadly speaking. With a preference for topics related to the following:

  - LLMs and Transformer architectures
  - Mechanistic interpretability
  - World models
  - Self play / synthetic data
  - Probabilistic programming

Copyright and IP rights: The research remains your intellectual property. You can use it and commercialise it as if you produced it independently of the grant.

Time commitment: You are expected to spend at least 50% of your working time on research related to the grant. You may have other commitments at the same time, as long as you can free up enough time.

Selection criteria:

  - How excited I am about the research you want to do
  - Whether I believe you can make good progress on it
  - Intrinsic motivation and strong determination

How to apply: Send an email to not_a_cat at fastmail com with the following:

  - Subject: "Application for Cat's Grant [10k, 50k, 100k]". Only keep the grant size(s) that you actually apply for, eg [50k] or [10k, 50k].
  - Info about yourself, please include links to github/linkedin and/or resume 
  - Recent projects/research you've done if any
  - Outline of the research you want to do as part of the grant. It's ok if you only have a vague idea, but better if you have something specific. It can be new or existing research.
  - Anything else you think is relevant. Evidence of strong capability is a plus, even if unrelated to ML research.

Happy to answer questions or comments.