As someone not working in the AI safety space, I’m intrigued by your opinions as to what extent grant making within AI safety is similar to and different from grant making within other cause priority areas, for example animal advocacy and global development and health?
It’s hard for me to say about what these differences look like outside of CG, but one thing that comes to mind is that GHW and animal welfare grantmaking is more based on quantitative modelling and BOTECs (though sometimes we use BOTECs on the GCR side of things).
My sense from reading the post is that those areas may be relatively less neglected, with fewer opportunities for identifying opportunities with outsized impact returns on investment. Do you think that is a reasonable assumption to be making?
It depends on how you define “neglected”. Like, in terms of EA focus and talent, they’re probably more neglected than AI safety/catastrophic risks. In terms of total $ spent by society at large, GHW is far less neglected than AI safety, which is in turn far less neglected than FAW.
This is kind of a lame answer, but whether AI safety has more or fewer outsized ROI opportunities really depends on your worldview. IMO, both spaces have a ton of opportunity. If I woke up tomorrow and decided that AI safety was no longer important (or I didn’t buy that worldview anymore), I’d be extremely excited about the vast number of opportunities to make global health and farmed animal welfare better.
Thanks for the comment!
It’s hard for me to say about what these differences look like outside of CG, but one thing that comes to mind is that GHW and animal welfare grantmaking is more based on quantitative modelling and BOTECs (though sometimes we use BOTECs on the GCR side of things).
It depends on how you define “neglected”. Like, in terms of EA focus and talent, they’re probably more neglected than AI safety/catastrophic risks. In terms of total $ spent by society at large, GHW is far less neglected than AI safety, which is in turn far less neglected than FAW.
This is kind of a lame answer, but whether AI safety has more or fewer outsized ROI opportunities really depends on your worldview. IMO, both spaces have a ton of opportunity. If I woke up tomorrow and decided that AI safety was no longer important (or I didn’t buy that worldview anymore), I’d be extremely excited about the vast number of opportunities to make global health and farmed animal welfare better.