10 million dollars will probably have very small impact on Terry Tao’s decision to work on the problem.
OTOH, setting up an open invitation for all world-class mathematicians/physicists/theoretical computer science to work on AGI safety through some sort of sabbatical system may be very impactful.
Many academics, especially in theoretical areas where funding for even the very best can be scarce, would jump at the opportunity of a no-strings-attached sabbatical. The no-strings-attached is crucial to my mind. Despite LW/Rationalist dogma equating IQ with weirdo-points, the vast majority of brilliant (mathematical) minds are fairly conventional—see Tao, Euler, Gauss.
I saw this comment on LessWrong
Thoughts?