I agree this is a big issue, and my impression is many grantmakers agree.
Hmm I’d love to see some survey results or a more representative sample. I often have trouble telling whether my opinions are contrarian or boringly mainstream!
Another benchmark would be something like offsetting CO2, which is most likely positive for existential risk and could be done at a huge scale. Personally, I hope we can find things that are a lot better than this, so I don’t think it’s the most relevant benchmark—more of a lower bound.
I wonder if this is better or worse than buying up fractions of AI companies?
In some ways, meta seems more straightforward—the benchmark should be can you produce more than 1 unit of resources (NPV) per unit that you use?
I think I agree, but I’m not confident about this, because this feels maybe too high-level? “1 unit” seems much more heterogeneous and less fungible when the resources we’re thinking of is “people” or (worse) “conceptual breakthroughs” (as might be the case for cause prio work), and there are lots of ways that things are in practice pretty hard to compare, including but not limited to sign flips.
I should have probably have just said that OP seem very interested in the last dollar problem (and that’s ~60% of grantmaking capacity).
Agree with your comments on meta.
With cause pri research, I’d be trying to think about how much more effectively it lets us spend the portfolio e.g. a 1% improvement to $420 million per year is worth about $4.2m per year.
Hmm I’d love to see some survey results or a more representative sample. I often have trouble telling whether my opinions are contrarian or boringly mainstream!
I wonder if this is better or worse than buying up fractions of AI companies?
I think I agree, but I’m not confident about this, because this feels maybe too high-level? “1 unit” seems much more heterogeneous and less fungible when the resources we’re thinking of is “people” or (worse) “conceptual breakthroughs” (as might be the case for cause prio work), and there are lots of ways that things are in practice pretty hard to compare, including but not limited to sign flips.
I should have probably have just said that OP seem very interested in the last dollar problem (and that’s ~60% of grantmaking capacity).
Agree with your comments on meta.
With cause pri research, I’d be trying to think about how much more effectively it lets us spend the portfolio e.g. a 1% improvement to $420 million per year is worth about $4.2m per year.