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Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

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Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#101

Post by kordlessagain »

villasv wrote: post #73
kordlessagain wrote: post #68

> End goal as of now: assemble a few great minds, give them the space to work rent-free in a region with good academic infrastructure, ideally let them collaborate, watch the beauty of it. My advice is not to expect others to do the work for rent and a “stipend”. This isn’t a game. AI done wrong will be the end of us.

It's not like we will carelessly stumble upon world-ending technology. This is not a sci-fi movie.

I think we will build it with intent and should be careful with our intentions/attentions.

You are right. Sci-fi movies are short.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#102

Post by selimthegrim »

JBorrow wrote: post #81

You should read up on the Max Planck institutes in Germany, and on the Flatiron Institute in New York. As others have said your problem will be attracting talent. You're best off organising free conferences, in collaboration with a MP, to start with.

Flatiron itself has had struggles moving people out into academia (not counting joint positions it already has) so citing it might be the exception proving the rule

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#103

Post by toomim »

xorsim wrote: post #90

I also look for such initiatives. We need something like the Invisible College [1]. And artificial life deserves more than a marginal interest, because is the gate towards understanding biological life as a computation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_College

I'm building an invisible college in Berkeley and Hawaii, and happen to own the domain name: https://invisible.college.

If anyone's interested in putting this domain to better use, please reach out!

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#104

Post by jeffchuber »

tlb wrote: post #2

I'm interested in doing something like this too, with a research focus on robotics, simulation, and programming languages. The big dichotomy in research orgs is whether you need resources beyond researcher stipends. Robotics usually does, and programming language research usually doesn't. OpenAI does -- both computing resources and infrastructure team salaries. Make sure you know which kind you're starting. Another d…

a new and better willow garage?? =D

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#105

Post by dnautics »

screye wrote: post #98

3 anecdotes that might be useful. 1. TTI Chicago The holy grail? It is relatively new (15 yrs old) and does top notch research. Super prestigious in certain areas. It is kind of related to UChicago, but also not really. A key learning is that you can start your institute by borrowing some prestige. Split some of your funds with a prestigious university while allowing some of your researchers to hold adjunct positions…

Along with Allen AI there is the Craig Venter institute. You did not just swindle wall street (I mean this in a good way) to fund scientific research and cash out at the top by having your board fire you (crocodile tears) to the tune of ~15B. Even if you did, your eponymous self-funded research institute will burn through its funds in a decade and your researchers will start having to do federal grant seeking at the point in time when federal grants are the hardest to obtain and other competitive research institutes are seeking a higher balance of private money.

A better example to shoot for would be peter Mitchell's Glynn research institute. You raise money to study one thing and one thing only. You do your research in a garage (to be fair, of a giant regency manor) and finish it. And then win the Nobel prize.

I'm still trying to find out what happened to Percy Julian's Julian research institute, which enjoyed some success but no longer exists as far as I can tell.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#107

Post by texasbigdata »

moritonal wrote: post #78
_gsgc wrote: post #44

Hi. I went through this journey myself. I have a CS master degree, and always wanted to transition into AI research (focus on probabilistic programming, deep learning and self-play, but also simulation, learning-to-learn, bayesian inference, genetic algorithms). The initial plan was to self-learn machine learning, deep learning and statistics. I did that for 1 year, with the hope of joining on of the big AI labs afte…

Very impressive and congratulations for playing the game right, but the idea that 3% of all crypto use is from 5 people in SF ratifies a lot of my negative beliefs about the crypto world.

Why? A priori there were 5 fewer, they saw an opportunity and entered, and likely more will too, and eventually it will saturate and balance out. Startups providing liquidity can be a good thing.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#108

Post by breck »

I don't know anything about it, but being just one island over I've heard of the Pacific Science Institute, which may be something like you are trying to do ( https://www.pacificscienceinstitute.org/)

There's also some great online research communities, like the https://futureofcoding.org/ slack.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#109

Post by texasbigdata »

tlb wrote: post #77
boringg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2500x returns in 14 months - that averages to an astounding 178x returns monthly. * If this is true * - it sounds like maybe the best return the markets have ever seen which I would imagine would be the luck of investing at the base of the pandemic and enjoying the inflation since then. [edit]: manners were missing: * if this is true * - congrats on your run and hopefully those research dollars develop some interesti…

It's actually 1.75x monthly. 1.75^14 == 2500.

Plus if they used any leverage it's even higher.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#110

Post by pontifier »

I'm trying to build something like this myself. I acquired a huge building and am trying to set it up as a science museum, makerspace and business incubator. There will be on-site housing as well.

I'm calling it Serendipic.org.

I haven't had too much luck so far, but I've been working on it for a year and have had nothing but problems with zoning. I can't even get power turned on. They just don't understand what I'm trying to do, and can't comprehend that I don't have every detail of the entire project mapped out in minute detail yet.

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