This all seems right and locally reasonable, but it also just seems very weird and confusing to me to update massively towards short AI timelines but not reconsider whether you should be a grantmaker in a different space (i.e., in a space more related to making transformative AI go well).
Agreed! I’ve been thinking about this a lot for myself the last few months and I think others should be considering it too. I wrote this piece more as, “conditional on you not planning to switch, you should at least do the following.”
I think it’s unlikely that lots of GHW or animal grantmakers switch to working on AI, mainly because grantmakers have a comparative advantage in their existing field and are arguably worse positioned to be an AI grantmaker compared to hiring someone with years of experience out of an existing AI non-profit, plus various personal identity & organizational reasons.
At the same time, I think there’s probably loads of alpha on the table for GHW/animals that we’re on track to leave on the table in the status quo.
Also very aware that maybe on some level, this is all still a form of being in denial even if it’s a Pareto improvement, idk.
Even if you can’t be an AI grantmaker, it seems quite plausible you could do something else that would be more helpful for AI than being a grantmaker in another area (which could be actively counterproductive for AI since you might be distracting funders from funding AI safety to funding other causes that aren’t very important if timelines to ASI are short).
This all seems right and locally reasonable, but it also just seems very weird and confusing to me to update massively towards short AI timelines but not reconsider whether you should be a grantmaker in a different space (i.e., in a space more related to making transformative AI go well).
Agreed! I’ve been thinking about this a lot for myself the last few months and I think others should be considering it too. I wrote this piece more as, “conditional on you not planning to switch, you should at least do the following.”
I think it’s unlikely that lots of GHW or animal grantmakers switch to working on AI, mainly because grantmakers have a comparative advantage in their existing field and are arguably worse positioned to be an AI grantmaker compared to hiring someone with years of experience out of an existing AI non-profit, plus various personal identity & organizational reasons.
At the same time, I think there’s probably loads of alpha on the table for GHW/animals that we’re on track to leave on the table in the status quo.
Also very aware that maybe on some level, this is all still a form of being in denial even if it’s a Pareto improvement, idk.
Even if you can’t be an AI grantmaker, it seems quite plausible you could do something else that would be more helpful for AI than being a grantmaker in another area (which could be actively counterproductive for AI since you might be distracting funders from funding AI safety to funding other causes that aren’t very important if timelines to ASI are short).