Something I feel confused about is, does the Long-Term Future Fund have room for more funding for AI safety, or does it and Open Philanthropy already have enough money to fund all the AI safety things they think are good? What’s an example of something that it might fund in AI safety that it isn’t currently because it doesn’t have enough money, or something that an AI safety org would want to do if only it had more money? Are there people that they’re not hiring that they would if they had more funding?
E.g., it seems to me that salaries at CHAI could be somewhat higher to be more competitive with, say, a software engineering internship in industry – indeed, salaries at the Alignment Research Center are quite high, probably so that they can attract the best candidates. But it’s also possible that the organizations have reason to keep salaries lower than they can afford – e.g., the meta org Lightcone Infrastructure chooses to pay 30% below market rate for various reasons – or high salaries have detrimental effects on the community. So I’m confused about whether there is a funding gap here.
Nitpick: universities (including Berkeley) have strict payscales and usually refuse to allow direct raises even when funding is completely secured. But this is a nitpick, because there are ways around this.
Something I feel confused about is, does the Long-Term Future Fund have room for more funding for AI safety, or does it and Open Philanthropy already have enough money to fund all the AI safety things they think are good? What’s an example of something that it might fund in AI safety that it isn’t currently because it doesn’t have enough money, or something that an AI safety org would want to do if only it had more money? Are there people that they’re not hiring that they would if they had more funding?
E.g., it seems to me that salaries at CHAI could be somewhat higher to be more competitive with, say, a software engineering internship in industry – indeed, salaries at the Alignment Research Center are quite high, probably so that they can attract the best candidates. But it’s also possible that the organizations have reason to keep salaries lower than they can afford – e.g., the meta org Lightcone Infrastructure chooses to pay 30% below market rate for various reasons – or high salaries have detrimental effects on the community. So I’m confused about whether there is a funding gap here.
Nitpick: universities (including Berkeley) have strict payscales and usually refuse to allow direct raises even when funding is completely secured. But this is a nitpick, because there are ways around this.