This page documents the full instructions and requirements for claiming the Echo Prize. Please contact us if you have any questions.
Choosing a Result
We have a list of results that we’ve already set bounties on. If you are not sure what you want to work on, we recommend you choose a result from that list. However, we are happy to discuss bounties for other results on a case-by-case basis.
We consider three main criteria when deciding whether to set a bounty on a result:
- Safety relevance: replicating or failing to replicate the result should materially contribute to the long-term safety of AI systems.
- Feasibility: the result should be feasible to replicate for an exceptional student with realistic resource constraints.
- Novelty: the first replication attempt is much more informative than the second, so we prefer novel replication attempts (and decay our bounties accordingly).
Approval and Preregistration
On the bounty page, you will find a description of the result and what we expect to see in a replication experiment. This is almost always flexible, but if you choose to do more or less than what is described approval may take longer as we may need to adjust the bounty higher or lower.
Before you start working on your replication experiment, you will use this description to write a proposal for your experiment. Then, you will submit this proposal to us for approval and preregistration. We’ll provide feedback on the proposal and help you revise it if needed. Once it’s approved, we’ll confirm the bounty amount and you can begin your experiment!
Submission and Payout
Once you have completed your experiment, you will write a report and submit it to us for review. Your report should include:
- a brief explanation of the original result;
- a description of your replication methodology and how it differs from the original study;
- links to your code and data;
- the results of your replication experiment; and
- if your results differ from or extend the original result, a brief discussion of your findings’ implications.
Once you submit your report, we’ll review it and either accept it or ask you to revise it. This should take around a week. Once accepted, we can pay out the bounty via ACH debit, Zelle, or USD stablecoins.
Eligibility
The Echo Prize is intended primarily for students and other newcomers to AI safety. However, anyone over the age of 13 who we can legally pay under US law is eligible.