This is an exciting idea and I am glad you are seeking to push it. I might be interested in offering funding.
Am I correct in thinking that:
(i) Work done for an employer will generally be the employer’s to offer rather than the employee’s? (Unless there is a contract between the employer and employee stating how ownership of certificates should be divided between them; actually I would love to have something like this in my contract).
(ii) Charities will generally not be eligible to apply, since it is ambiguous how initial ownership of the certificates should be distributed between the charity and their donors? This could be avoided if the charity explicitly handed over certificates to donors.
Overall I wonder how much it would be good to start pushing supply side of certificates rather than demand side. Are you in a position to offer certificates for the AI Impacts site? I would certainly think about buying some (of course it would depend on price; this makes me realise that in the current charitable economy people mostly do things they themselves think are particularly valuable, which may mean they set higher prices than donors would).
(i) Neither of them could offer the certificates unilaterally unless they had sorted this out in advance, since workers often do jobs in part because of their humanitarian impact. I suspect no one at most EA organizations would be working there for the salary!
(ii) Yes. (This is very similar to the last point, with similar caveats.)
I don’t think that trading certificates will be worthwhile very often. As you say, people tend to work on things they are particularly optimistic about. So for the moment I mostly expect the buyers and sellers to be disjoint sets.
Good point on (i). I’d been (somewhat inconsistently) thinking of for-profit ventures.
I realise that there is an interpretation of impact under which issue (ii) could disappears. Donors have given money to the charity to make use to further their charitable objectives. It’s generally fine for charities to do things like fundraising with some of this money. Performing charitable activities and selling the certificates of impact if they think they can make better use of the money would just be another form of fundraising. This is analogous to a company issuing more shares—although it dilutes the ownership of existing shareholders, it is balanced by the extra value the company now holds.
Of course you’d also need to resolve the employer/employee issue.
This is an exciting idea and I am glad you are seeking to push it. I might be interested in offering funding.
Am I correct in thinking that:
(i) Work done for an employer will generally be the employer’s to offer rather than the employee’s? (Unless there is a contract between the employer and employee stating how ownership of certificates should be divided between them; actually I would love to have something like this in my contract).
(ii) Charities will generally not be eligible to apply, since it is ambiguous how initial ownership of the certificates should be distributed between the charity and their donors? This could be avoided if the charity explicitly handed over certificates to donors.
Overall I wonder how much it would be good to start pushing supply side of certificates rather than demand side. Are you in a position to offer certificates for the AI Impacts site? I would certainly think about buying some (of course it would depend on price; this makes me realise that in the current charitable economy people mostly do things they themselves think are particularly valuable, which may mean they set higher prices than donors would).
Great!
It probably makes sense to wait and see how the first one or two rounds go / until some kinks are ironed out. We should talk about it by PM/email.
(i) Neither of them could offer the certificates unilaterally unless they had sorted this out in advance, since workers often do jobs in part because of their humanitarian impact. I suspect no one at most EA organizations would be working there for the salary!
(ii) Yes. (This is very similar to the last point, with similar caveats.)
I don’t think that trading certificates will be worthwhile very often. As you say, people tend to work on things they are particularly optimistic about. So for the moment I mostly expect the buyers and sellers to be disjoint sets.
Good point on (i). I’d been (somewhat inconsistently) thinking of for-profit ventures.
I realise that there is an interpretation of impact under which issue (ii) could disappears. Donors have given money to the charity to make use to further their charitable objectives. It’s generally fine for charities to do things like fundraising with some of this money. Performing charitable activities and selling the certificates of impact if they think they can make better use of the money would just be another form of fundraising. This is analogous to a company issuing more shares—although it dilutes the ownership of existing shareholders, it is balanced by the extra value the company now holds.
Of course you’d also need to resolve the employer/employee issue.