Various cause areas incl. AI Safety and Effective Altruism
The biggest challenge with impact purchases is that the market for selling is usually much larger than the market for buying. This project would limit the scope of the purchase to particular people to ensure a) that impact sellers were aware of the impact purchase’s existence when they decided to pursue that project* and b) to address this market imbalance and therefore increase people’s odds that they are paid and hence motivation.
For example, it might be worthwhile creating an impact purchase for each cohort of the AGI safety fundamentals course with purchases after 1 year and 2 years for safety-relevant work. Alternatively, I could imagine an impact purchase for Oxford University students.
I could also imagine a system where people pre-register their projects which would allow people to see how big the pool is and how competitive it is likely to be.
Risks: Even if people mostly believe that they will be compensated by impact purchase for their work, their risk aversion might prevent it from having any significant impact on their motivation.
(This is a refinement of Yonatan Cale’s proposal)
Limited Scope Impact Purchase:
Various cause areas incl. AI Safety and Effective Altruism
The biggest challenge with impact purchases is that the market for selling is usually much larger than the market for buying. This project would limit the scope of the purchase to particular people to ensure a) that impact sellers were aware of the impact purchase’s existence when they decided to pursue that project* and b) to address this market imbalance and therefore increase people’s odds that they are paid and hence motivation.
For example, it might be worthwhile creating an impact purchase for each cohort of the AGI safety fundamentals course with purchases after 1 year and 2 years for safety-relevant work. Alternatively, I could imagine an impact purchase for Oxford University students.
I could also imagine a system where people pre-register their projects which would allow people to see how big the pool is and how competitive it is likely to be.
Risks: Even if people mostly believe that they will be compensated by impact purchase for their work, their risk aversion might prevent it from having any significant impact on their motivation.
*Increases the chance of it being counterfactual