I hate to say it...but I agree. That really pains me to say because I wish there were opportunities like this beyond a typical PhD program. The concept is great. But this doesn't seem like the best implementation of that concept.

It does feel like there are more questions than answers here. What are the differences between full "members" and "affiliates"? Why aren't there more recognizable names behind this? I don't see a celebrity research behind this, so to speak, and that is precisely the kind of person I think you should get to start this kind of organization.

I also don't understand what "decentralized Bell Labs" is supposed to mean. The monetary funding is clearly centralized under one organization, so do they just mean the researchers won't literally be physically colocated? Is that meaningful enough a differentiater to highlight it? I can't think of a single industrial lab that has researchers who work in isolation with mentorship here and there. Didn't we try this with the Thiel Fellowship already?

However I don't think this is shady, and I think that's an uncharitable way to interpret it. It looks like the members' credentials are legitimate. The problem I have is that there doesn't seem to be a top researcher with tour de force accomplishments backing it. That probably sounds prejudiced, but I consider it a negative signal that there are no such researchers who were even willing to affiliate their names, let alone their guidance to the project.

Founder here. We have secured partial funding but not all that we intend to raise. This is just a pre-application - an improved website and application will be released later. If you submit your application now we'll follow up with you when we release our full application or convert it automatically.

We're focused on creating a world-class mentorship community before increasing our Fellow outreach efforts.

Very cool idea! Nice to see funding for non-traditional research models.

But I'm a little confused why you made this comment on an earlier HN post about Shannon Labs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17675617

it was posted earlier, but never made it on the top 10 pages for reasons we couldn't figure out despite getting plenty of upvotes on /newest. To check if it was actually alive we posted a couple dummy comments after a while, and then abandoned the post.

(disclosure, I'm a mentor and the post was sent to a few mentors, which likely tripped some bot checker)

Because you also used a voting ring (next to astroturfing). Admire the hustle, though a bit too naughty.

A few of us think the project is very much worth upvoting! The bot checker should appreciate that :)

That's why I called it naughty and not blatant manipulation. Now if this were an ICO or a company looking for an easy flip in the overhyped AI market, it would be different.

Totally reasonable. I was more (be/a)mused than suspicious. I'm excited to see what gets funded!

That's not confusing :)

It looks like the founder was just trying to kick off discussion without being explicit about her involvement. The submitter (Aaron Lin) is also part of the organization.

In the scheme of things, I give them a pass. Raising attention for an initiative like this can be challenging. It's not actually dishonest.

" It's not actually dishonest."

dishonest - Intended to mislead or cheat.

Raising any initiative with multiples of free 100k carrots is super easy. Why do they have to resort to all other tactics?

So do you have enough funding to offer fellowships or not?

> We have secured partial funding but not all that we intend to raise. This is just a pre-application - an impr

why AI?

The mentorship pool is mostly focused on AI and related fields, and it's high leverage for relatively few resources invested (check out https://aigrant.org/)