Intensive Teaching · September 2026

The most important things

Before: Join the Iliad Discord and check you can see #intensive-september. That is where you post any material you need to share with participants. If you can't see it, tell Leonard (@leonardbereska on Discord).
During: At 17:40, make sure everyone fills out the feedback form.
After: Fill out the end-of-day log: rate the day and tell us anything that went wrong.
Fill out Who stood out: name anyone who made a positive impression.

Questions about pay, travel, logistics or materials: see the FAQ.

57 project proposals are open for review. Stars, a sentence, or both. Read them.

Your days

Project proposal day 1 Wed 23 Sep, leading 29 responses · energy 3.7/5

Overall +0.19 as expected n = 27

Content +0.04 as expected n = 27

Clarity +0.04 as expected n = 27

Motivation +0.15 as expected n = 27

Exercises +0.80 better than expected n = 5

Readings +0.67 better than expected n = 6

Other activities +0.52 better than expected n = 21

Pace +0.41 too fast n = 27

Difficulty +0.37 too hard n = 27

Novelty +0.07 an even mix n = 27

Read what they wrote41

Worked well13

I liked discussing with others. I appreciated the feedback from the fellows.
I really enjoyed talking to everyone and hearing their ideas, and trying to review the literature with the help of Claude helped me learn a lot about what is the state of the art in the field im interested in.
I think it was an interesting and valuable experience to figure out how to write a project proposal!
I thought today was a great chance to think about research directions and ideas.
I think this was very useful practice. I think the next proposal I write will be much better.
The feedback and discussion with a fellow
I think the general idea of the day is very good. The feedback loops are also useful, but I didn't get much feedback as only one person signed up to give me feedback.
Working in groups.
Vibecoding to test toy models for our proposals
Sitting in groups and discussion research ideas was quite helpful.
- Comments from mentors and fellows on the doc during the day, really useful for tightening the question
The schedule given in advance, which really helped the time management. Also the document structure in general -- was nice to be able to see what peers are doing after I finished with mine. Meaning, it is better than random allocation between reviewers and proposals (I would've died reviewing Abstractions and Latents ones).
Getting feedback from other participants was useful. It was good to get feedback from people with a similar knowledge base as myself.

Would improve20

I didn't really like the structure of "the team has to produce as many proposals as many members it has". I had expected the lecturers from previous days would be there to give us feedback - this would have made the day much better.
I found the whole thing a bit difficult, mostly due to my own lack of familiarity with the topic and desire to do something interesting and impactful. Due to the different knowledge of each person, it often made it hard to synthesise a good proposal where each person could contribute something meaningful. This is not so much a criticism of a structure, but more a point about the difficulty of running days like this. I think splitting it into two days that are closer together, would allow for more 'settling' topic wise, as in the end I felt in a rush. Leonard was a bit unclear on if we all propose the same project but in our own works, or if we all make individual proposals under the same umbrella group. As for learning papers in my area that I would build from, I found it frustrating to just have to trust claude summaries, I need about half a day to really read a paper, and I believe that at least taking that very small amount of time to digest something gives far more insight about what they have done and what is left to be done. I feel like although I understand the maths of everything with relative ease, understanding it on a deeper level takes slightly more time. But again, this is also a criticism of my lack of preparedness.
I found it a little difficult to focus with the density of conversations in the room - maybe it would have been good to reserve a place or time for quiet work. I enjoyed discussing ideas with other people during the day, but I worked on the proposal by myself as I simply thought it would be much more difficult to create >=N proposals in a group of N for N >= 2! Lastly, while I was pleased with my proposal, I think it's difficult to come up with a good original idea in one day - it feels like most have already been researched by the professionals.
I thought the day was great, however I never got the chance to speak with a mentor. If mentors could make sure to spend just 5 minutes talking to each group/person doing a project that would have made it even better.
I think the directions of what we're supposed to do could have been more clear. Especially it was hard to understand what is expected of us in terms of working in groups or individually.
More fellows to help throughout the day
Longer word count for some parts on form
A bit chaotic. It's very difficult to write a proper proposal in one day, specially, considering that this topics are not within our expertise. I think some initial suggestions/questions already given would have been nice input, even if in the final proposal we diverged. Otherwise, its difficult to make a sensible question that can be expanded in a day.
Add more structure, that was a bit too chaotic.
I think I would have benefitted from some additional structure and/or time. I found it very stressful, the way it was. This could include starting to think about this on an earlier day, for example choosing a topic. Some more concrete information on what to expect on the day would also be good :)
Maybe a little bit of more structure around how to organise groups.
I thought today was enjoyable. Perhaps make it more structured in the future.
It would have been better to have some more time to discuss with people about the feedback
This exercise needs more guidance and structure. A list of open problems per research field should be supplied. TAs should circulate and engage in conversation with participants throughout the day (not wait for participants to go to them). Saying stuff like "some research proposals are too good to be true" is counterproductive without constructive feedback on what is a realistic project proposal. One way of preparing this exercise in advance would be to present open areas of research at the end of each new subject.
- Share the submission form's sections and word limits at the start, the doc template was different so I had to restructure at the end - An example of a strong proposal would help calibrate
More time for feedback, and more guidelines for reviewers (what to look for, how specific a comment should be). I did my best in providing actionable comments (that is, leading to edits in the documents which I believe would improve it): however, I feel like I lost the reviewing lottery since reviewer 1 left a generic approval paragraph, and reviewer 2 communicated nothing. I'd question the default to group work for project proposal drafting. I concede that one reason to prefer solo work might be over confidence, but the opposite might be true: personally, I had to carefully check papers before coming up with something, and did not want to waste anyone's time dragging them in a possible aimless chase.
I think specifying that people should use the structure provided in the Google Doc for the pre-feedback iteration, and the structure given in the submission form only later, would help. Or was it not the intention? Then would be nice if that was specified explicitly. Also perhaps a good idea to give a heads-up that the proposal would have word limits in different sections, so that people do not formulate a lot from the get-go. Also, the document logistics should be more clearly specified (I did not notice the "Feedback" sheet where I had to put my paper). Also, being able to book your name there before going and providing the feeback would be nice-to-know-beforehand. Also, what might've been lacking was perhaps a suggestion that a proposal should not be too general or ambitious etc.
The grouping and feedback structure were pretty confusing. Also, I think presenting our idea actually could've been useful; maybe pair groups up and have them present to each other?
Would've been nice to have more senior people to brainstorm with. A structured morning where we split into groups with a fellow/lecturer in each group would've been nice
I found today to be particularly difficult/stressful. Having one day to create a proposal in an area I am not familiar with is asking quite a lot. The limited time and background knowledge strongly pushes one in the direction of being overly-reliant on Claude/Chat-GPT to conduct literature searches and identify open problems. I was not comfortable with putting my name on something I did not have enough time to develop properly. The format of the proposal was also prescribed, and appears quite unnatural for me. Having a suggested format would be fine, but it would be good if the proposal format was more open. A summary of my motivation, interests, and thought processes is perhaps more appropriate than a specific proposal given my background at this point in time.

Changed my mind6

I do firmly believe that doing this research is important and necessary, and will use my next few months to try and understand the current state of the art better. I would be very glad to sit with a project which may in some way help our understanding of AI and learning. Obviously I have my own ideas about what would be effective or not, but regardless, I feel sometimes the culture of this place is a bit odd to me, the scale of the funding available and how insular it can appear is something new, especially coming from academia. I had some conversations with other people here and I asked them if people (and research groups) are just using the funding to extract what they can from the field while its hot, well aware that other industries may collapse in the future. Almost everyone said yes and said that most people here would probably take a job at a frontier lab if It was on the table. I'm not necessarily against this for others but it was an odd thought to grapple with. It made me question if it was in some odd way selfish being here. I guess it made me question why im here, why I feel unwell seeing some aspects of the culture, if I want to fit in culture so that I could contribute to the research, or if I want to play some game to ride a wave of funding as far as possible. I think almost everyone here is ready to work towards the goal of AI safety, but there is also the normal urge to find a pet project and just do something cute and find a hole in the research so we can just pump out some papers and be in some glass tower. Maybe thats a bit harsh of me im just venting. Regardless, I think the work is super important, I've already registered for an SLT conference next month and will attend, and will start looking for projects to do in the coming months.
Could imagine doing a project or fellowship in a better way now
n/a
I realized I am able to do some experiments that might be relevant for some areas of AI safety.
Coming up with smart research is hard.
That writing a good proposal is challenging, and is a fine balance between smth specific and impactful.

Other thoughts2

n/a
It was a good activity.

Launch Day + proposal round 2 Fri 2 Oct, leading 20 responses · energy 3.8/5

Overall +0.11 as expected n = 18

Content 0.00 as expected n = 18

Clarity +0.17 as expected n = 18

Motivation +0.39 better than expected n = 18

Exercises +1.25 better than expected n = 4

Readings +0.40 better than expected n = 5

Other activities +0.63 better than expected n = 8

Pace +0.44 too fast n = 18

Difficulty +0.28 too hard n = 18

Novelty +0.17 an even mix n = 18

Read what they wrote28

Worked well7

I think I ended up with quite a good proposal :)
Proposal days are great!
Direct feedback from mentors on proposal feasibility.
THe fact that the intermediate submission coincides with the final one. Also, the Launch Day presentation! Very helpful
Getting feedback from other people
Kyriakos (I believe that was his name) is fantastic and really helped me out with his advice on my proposal
Networking with the mentors / fellows.

Would improve11

It's a little difficult to feel like there's enough time to come up with a project proposal, but it's nevertheless a fun and rewarding exercise.
More 1-on-1 mentor matching slots.
I don't know for sure -- but developing ideas for theoretical projects, especially on Agent Foundations, was definitely harder in comparison to the empirical ones. I wonder if it's better to ask people to start thinking about the proposal, and announce that it will share the identical structure to the first one several days ahead.
Not sure proposal days are valuable for me.
I think the same as from previous proposal day
More structure please.
I thought this was great.
I enjoyed today.
Nothing had a great day! Actually, I think it was a bit annoying to work in groups during the last proposal day and then alone today, I felt I would have rather inverted it, or had both days the same, or had the option on both days
In the last project day, we were strongly encouraged to work in group. Today, instead, we were asked to work alone with no further explanation. That felt a bit arbitrary.
I think it is really difficult to come up with a proposal in our situation

Changed my mind6

Reading more about debate, I think it is a very interesting topic and something I want to look into more.
Sharper scoping makes high-risk research questions tractable.
Coming up with a novel proposal is hard when Claude tells you that it has largely been done. Very discouraging. But it is the research reality, and it's good that literature review has become so much more simpler.
n/a
I feel like on the last day I have become very driven to do something, I dont really know what just yet and need to figure that out, but I plan on working on some projects over the next few months
I got some advice from Zach on my future career in AI safety which I considered really helpful

Other thoughts4

Incredible program overall, huge thanks to the team.
I have slipped on feedback forms starting Tuesday this week, and only filled them today. I am wondering how common of a phenomenon that is. Sorry for that nonetheless.
n/a
Please change the feedback form so that it matches a day almost entirely devoted to drafting a project. Thanks!

The day

10:00 Lecture starts

12:30 Lunch at LISA

13:30 Afternoon session

17:40 Feedback form

18:00 Day ends. Dinner at LISA

When	Where
Mon 7 Sep	LISA, 25 Holywell Row, London EC2A 4XE
Tue 8 – Mon 14 Sep	23 Curtain Road, London EC2A 3LT
From Tue 15 Sep	69 Wilson Street, Moorgate, London EC2A 2BB

Resources

Elsewhere