AI Safety Europe Retreat 2023 Retrospective

I think the value comes from:

• connections made
  • participants made 6.7 new connections on average (Question in the feedback form was "How many additional people working on AI safety would you feel comfortable asking for a small professional favor after this retreat? E.g. having a call to discuss research ideas, giving feedback on a draft, or other tasks that take around 30 minutes..."). 
  • 18 people mentioned  their plans to reach out to people from the retreat for feedback on posts or career plans, for research discussions or for collaborations.
• motivation boost
• projects/collaborations started
  • 9 people mentioned projects (Writing posts, doing experiments, and field building projects) they would start as a result of the retreat.
• participants getting a better map of the space
  • which people exist, what kinds of things they are good at, what they have worked on, what you can ask them about. 
  • What projects and what research exist. 
  • A general sense of "getting more pieces of the puzzle". 
  • I think this is hard to measure, but really valuable.

I find it hard to say which of these is most important, and they are also highly entangled with each other