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This is: EA Hotel with free accommodation and board for two years, published by Greg_Colbourn on the AI Alignment Forum.
[Posted about previously here and here]
Overview
Do you long to be free from material needs and be able to focus on the real work you want to do? I know I’ve certainly been in that situation a few times in the past, but instead have lost time doing unimportant and menial jobs in order to be able to get by financially. Talented effective altruists losing time like this is especially tragic given that a lot of cause areas are currently constrained by the amount of quality direct work being done in them.
Buildings in the seaside holiday resort of Blackpool (UK) are really cheap. I’ve bought a 17 bedroom hotel with dining room, lounge and bar for £130k. Assuming a 7% rental yield (which is reasonably high), this works out at about £45 per person per month rent. Factoring in bills, catering, and a modest stipend/entertainment budget, living costs could be as low as £5700/person/year (or lower for people sharing rooms, see budget). This is amazing value for hotel living with all basic services provided.
The idea is to invite people to live there, with all their expenses covered by donors, for up to two years. Funding is already in place (via me) for the first year of operations. The project will be managed by someone who lives on site and deals with all the admin/finances, shopping/cooking/cleaning/laundry, socials/events and morale - they will also have free living expenses, and be paid a modest salary. Note that this should be considered as a potential high impact, high prestige supporting role, for those excited to be involved in such a capacity on an EA mission. Guests will be free from concerns of material survival, and be able to have prolonged and uninterrupted focus on whatever projects they are working on. Obviously these will be largely limited to purely desk-based, or remote work. Potential people suited to being guests are those who want to:
- self-study economics, philosophy, science, AI, programming etc, in order to contribute to future efforts in various EA cause areas, without having to worry about - or waste time - getting (mostly irrelevant or menial) paid work in order to fund themselves
- immerse themselves in desk-based research/writing on an EA-related subject without having to worry about fundraising, a job, grants, teaching, tenure etc.
- work on a mostly software or research based start-up/project(/phase of a project) without having to worry about runway (be it for profit with a view to earning to give, or an EA-aligned/adjacent charity)
A somewhat out of the way location with little in the way of outside distractions most of the year, combined with fully catered living arrangements, should be ideal for engaging in deep work (usual focusing hacks applied)
Whilst a simple pledge to work on useful EA things is required (“I pledge to work towards doing the most good that I can whilst staying at the hotel”), there is no formal requirement for people to produce more value than is put in to help them. Given the low costs involved, it’s a fairly low bar to clear though - produce more value in a year than £5700 donated to the most effective charity (+ opportunity cost; for more see Value Proposition section). And just one major success will make the whole thing worth it. A useful analogy might be a catered and managed university residence (paid for by a grant), or perhaps even New York’s Chelsea Hotel, which produced billions of dollars worth of art, despite many guests not paying rent (and was an inspiration for this project). The slightly anarchic feel to it with a lack of formal structure does appeal too. Not requiring people to submit detailed grant applications is also something that may seem like a breath of fresh air to people used to cont...
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