Probably the most dangerous thing you could possible fund is AI capabilities. Openphil gave 30M to OpenAI and the community has been pretty accepting of ai capabilities. This is way more dangerous than anything I would consider funding!
Ya, I guess I wouldn’t have funded them myself in Open Phil’s position, but I’m probably missing a lot of context. I think they did this to try to influence OpenAI to take safety more seriously, getting Holden on their board. Pretty expensive for a board seat, though, and lots of potential downside with unrestricted funding. From their grant writeup:
We expect the primary benefits of this grant to stem from our partnership with OpenAI, rather than simply from contributing funding toward OpenAI’s work. While we would also expect general support for OpenAI to be likely beneficial on its own, the case for this grant hinges on the benefits we anticipate from our partnership, particularly the opportunity to help play a role in OpenAI’s approach to safety and governance issues.
FWIW, I trust the judgement of Open Phil in animal welfare and the EA Animal Welfare Fund a lot. See my long comment here.
Ya, I guess I wouldn’t have funded them myself in Open Phil’s position, but I’m probably missing a lot of context. I think they did this to try to influence OpenAI to take safety more seriously, getting Holden on their board. Pretty expensive for a board seat, though, and lots of potential downside with unrestricted funding. From their grant writeup:
FWIW, I trust the judgement of Open Phil in animal welfare and the EA Animal Welfare Fund a lot. See my long comment here.