Hmm, I think there's a number of people who have some limited AI experience (side project, internship, etc.) but don't have the money to invest in a huge amount

Hmm, I think there's a number of people who have some limited AI experience (side project, internship, etc.) but don't have the money to invest in a huge amount of cloud computing hours to do novel research. It doesn't seem like this is something like the Thiel fellowship that's supposed to replace an education, it's just a way to make AI research affordable. I'm sure if I wanted to I could scrape together enough money to do a lot of cloud computing and be able to aggressively try out ideas, but that would cut into money for living expenses. With a grant like this, I would feel much more comfortable just experimenting, not feeling like if I train a model overnight and it doesn't turn out perfectly I lose $10. I don't think a hobbyist can justify using Google/Amazon's best GPU processors, and instead must settle for their cheaper options to feel like they're being financially responsible. I see this AI Grant as a way to solve that problem. AI projects aren't like web-dev projects-- it can take significant amount of money to train a state of the art model in the cloud.