HaydnBelfield comments on We’re no longer “pausing most new longtermist funding commitments”

[HaydnBelfield]

I looked at OpenPhil grants tagged as “Longtermism” in 2021 or 2022 (from here or the downloadable spreadsheet). I count 142 grants made since the beginning of July 2021. The bar isn’t being set by grants per se, but as a percentage: “% of our longtermist grantmaking over the last 18 months (by dollars)”. These 142 grants are about $235m, so half would be $117m.

For context, some grants are tiny, e.g. the smallest is $2,400. The top 10 represent over half that funding ($129m).

Centre for Effective Altruism — Biosecurity Coworking Space	Centre for Effective Altruism	Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness	5,318,000	Aug-22
Effective Altruism Funds — Re-Granting Support	Center for Effective Altruism	Effective Altruism Community Growth (Longtermism)	7,084,000	Feb-22
Centre for Effective Altruism — Harvard Square Coworking Space	Center for Effective Altruism	Effective Altruism Community Growth (Longtermism)	8,875,000	Aug-22
Redwood Research — General Support	Redwood Research	Potential Risks from Advanced AI	9,420,000	Nov-21
Good Forever — Regranting for Biosecurity Projects	Good Forever Foundation	Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness	10,000,000	Feb-22
Redwood Research — General Support (2022)	Redwood Research	Potential Risks from Advanced AI	10,700,000	Aug-22
Californians Against Pandemics — California Pandemic Early Detection and Prevention Act Ballot Initiative	Californians Against Pandemics	Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness	11,100,000	Oct-21
Massachusetts Institute of Technology — AI Trends and Impacts Research (2022)	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Potential Risks from Advanced AI	13,277,348	Mar-22
Funding for AI Alignment Projects Working With Deep Learning Systems		Potential Risks from Advanced AI	14,459,002	Apr-22
Center for Security and Emerging Technology — General Support (August 2021)	Center for Security and Emerging Technology	Potential Risks from Advanced AI	38,920,000	Aug-21

Edit: cut the following text thanks to Linch’s spot:

Though I note that you mentioned “we also included a number of grants now-defunct FTX-associated funders had made.”—it would be helpful for you to at least release the spreadsheet of grants you considered, even if for very understandable reasons you don’t want to publish the Tier ranking.

[Linch]

I looked at OpenPhil grants tagged as “Longtermism” in 2021 or 2022 (from here or the downloadable spreadsheet). Though I note that you mentioned “we also included a number of grants now-defunct FTX-associated funders had made.”

I think this is screened off by Holden’s explanation:

About 40% of our longtermist grantmaking over the last 18 months (by dollars) would have qualified for tier 4 or better (which, under the new guidance, means it would be funded). Note that this figure refers only to our longtermist grantmaking, and does not include grants by other funders (we included some of the latter in our exercise, but I’m reporting a figure based on Open Philanthropy alone because I think it will be easier to interpret). [emphasis mine, included surrounding text in quote so easier to interpret]