Thanks for proposing this, it's a great idea!

I am quite interested in exploring this more. We currently have a prosaic list of potential capstone projects, intended to be done by AGI Safety Fundamentals programme participants after the course. I think forms a prototype of this proposal, however one main difference is it's not really about cutting-edge research, more like skilling-up and fit-testing ideas.

Some questions I am interested in exploring further to see where the needs are for this meta-project:

• Do AIS researchers have a list of projects ready-to-go that they don't publicly advertise?
  My guess: probably? Most people have too many threads they want to pursue in not enough time - in my experience it doesn't take long to get to this point in a research career.
• If researchers do have lists of project ideas, why don't they share the lists already?
  My guesses as to why:
  1) They haven't (all) written them down in a sharable format
  2) There's no logical place to put them (e.g. a board doesn't exist), so no obvious inspiration to publish a list or proof that it's impactful.
  3) Working on a project requires a lot of context on previous work done in the same vein. Supporting people who want to pursue a project idea would be a lot of work for the idea-originator, to get the project off the ground.
  With a public board, the researcher doesn't get to vet candidates who might try to take the projects on, which might make it difficult to manage deciding who they want to work with or not on top of doing their regular work.
  Vetting and management/ops are some of the things AI safety camp and CERI summer research fellowship offers, for that reason.
• Why don't other fields have public lists of ideas? E.g. is there a list of research ideas for nuclear fusion? I don't think there is - so other fields also do project coordination behind closed doors, in academic institutions and conferences.
  My guess as to why: other fields may just not be well coordinated and maybe we could just do better. They also don't have as much untied funding for individual researchers to spring up and take stuff on, outside of universities/institutions.

Interested if you or others have thoughts!

Great proposal! I was just sent this post today but we are already working on something along these lines and will publish more during the coming weeks about it (including the web app part). 

We are currently working on a spreadsheet-based MVP that I'll share very soon on which we are getting feedback on the structure and content. If anyone wants to either be part of a user interview, write down their ideas or just discuss the idea platform itself, my calendar is wide open and you can send me an email at [email protected] at any time.

Additionally, we have worked out a design and started development of a web app (a producthunt-like design with specific choices for AI safety) but want to approve the design thoughts and more before committing 100%, alas the spreadsheet-first method.

I agree with your analyses that it seems much more like a "we are missing a platform to easily incentivize sharing ideas" than a culture problem. A clear example of this was the FTX Future Fund Idea Competition. Loads of ideas present with no problems in sharing them (especially for a reward).