I was going to write a response but you wrote most of what I was thinking! In general the best way to start an org is small, and as you learn and develop you grow into being able to use more money cost effectively.
I think @Bentham’s Bulldog has good examples of orgs that need to be started, but lobbying organizations and new animal welfare can’t usually use millions cost effectively in the first couple of years.
@Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 At least one Anthropic founder has actually committed recently to their pledge, on Opraha month ago what’s more!
”DANIELA AMODEI: And for us, the public benefit is the social good, social mission part of Anthropic. And the 80% pledge that Dario and I and our other 5 co-founders have all taken is really in spirit and in keeping with that mission. It’s this idea that we’re really doing this because we want AI to go well for everybody. And we hope that if a company is successful, we’ll be able to also do a lot of good in the world philanthropically.”
I still think this is weak. This is just typical PR. If they said “we have already put our stock in a DAF. we are committed to getting this money to solve XYZ problems”, I would still be skeptical. The base rate is just so low for giving away money and most billionaires actually do talk about their intentions with the money much more than these people. https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-benevolent-artificial-intelligence/
To be clear, the average billionaire talks about the great things they will do with their money constantly. I put relatively low weight on this. I would love to see Anthropic founders do/say something like “each of the 7 founders are selling a combined $1B of their stock and we are keeping none of it. It is all going to these organizations. AI is going to change the world rapidly and we expect a lot more money to flow to the philanthropic sector and we want to get this money out the door since they need time. It is a very small percentage of our stakes and our board has signed off.”
Lorenzo, thanks for sharing that blog post. I didn’t know about that, though I know about many Anthropic founders’ previous affiliations with EA.
This is a slight update, but not enough to change my mind in the opposite direction. I already knew that Anthropic founders had a previous relationship to EA, and I don’t doubt that they have donated, maybe something on the order of 10% of their income to global health before Anthropic. I know Daniela is married to Holden. I know many Anthropic founders and staff are early signatories to the GWWC pledge. I know there was a group house, and I know that early on, Anthropic founders’ reasons for leaving OpenAI were around AI safety.
That said, my overall point still stands. They have greatly distanced themselves from EA and haven’t said anything public about it in years, apart from pretending they didn’t know what it was and other strange statements. Most of all, the base rate of sticking to a pledge like this is very low.
$1B is a very low number over 4-5 years, given their wealth and how much it could grow. I’d also be interested in any donations they have made privately in the last few years (remember, they still earn decent salaries and, above all, could liquidate some stock).
I would bet that Dario Amodei makes <$1B in donations before June 2027, self-reported (money has to move, not just say some shiboleth about donating the money in the future) at 50⁄50 odds. Any 501(c)(3) would count.
Edit: Sorry, one more thing. I know many Anthropic employees and know about the donation match. I think many employees at Anthropic who intend to, and I believe will, donate significant amounts to charity over the next few years. Some have already started. I salute them, believe their intentions, and admire them. I merely think we have to go “bottom up” in counting these donations as opposed to “top-down,” where we assess a person and their intentions and what they will give to.
maybe something on the order of 10% of their income
Not sure how much it matters, but the blog post mentions $10,000 to GiveWell alone, which was likely significantly more than 10% of a graduate student’s income.
$1B is a very low number over 4-5 years, given their wealth and how much it could grow
Yeah I agree, for what it’s worth I would expect (with low confidence) they’ll donate significantly more. But in general, for most planning, it doesn’t matter how much they give in relative terms but in absolute terms.
I would bet that Dario Amodei makes <$1B in donations before June 2027, self-reported
Something interesting/unique about Anthropic’s situation is that all 7 cofounders are now likely worth >$10B, so even if Dario doesn’t donate much there’s still a good chance others do (but obviously they’re correlated.)
Personally, I’m most uncertain about whether they’ll end up donating significantly to improve the welfare of biological beings vs focusing on digital beings. I expect them to take machine welfare quite seriously and increasingly so, and that to be something that markets and other funders won’t care as much about.
I think it’s also possible that they end up donating after 2027, timing donations around a potential critical transition period, and of course they have strong incentives to focus most of their capital to on winning the race.
I was going to write a response but you wrote most of what I was thinking! In general the best way to start an org is small, and as you learn and develop you grow into being able to use more money cost effectively.
I think @Bentham’s Bulldog has good examples of orgs that need to be started, but lobbying organizations and new animal welfare can’t usually use millions cost effectively in the first couple of years.
@Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 At least one Anthropic founder has actually committed recently to their pledge, on Opraha month ago what’s more!
”DANIELA AMODEI: And for us, the public benefit is the social good, social mission part of Anthropic. And the 80% pledge that Dario and I and our other 5 co-founders have all taken is really in spirit and in keeping with that mission. It’s this idea that we’re really doing this because we want AI to go well for everybody. And we hope that if a company is successful, we’ll be able to also do a lot of good in the world philanthropically.”
https://singjupost.com/oprah-podcast-w-co-founders-of-claude-ai-transcript/
I still think this is weak. This is just typical PR. If they said “we have already put our stock in a DAF. we are committed to getting this money to solve XYZ problems”, I would still be skeptical. The base rate is just so low for giving away money and most billionaires actually do talk about their intentions with the money much more than these people. https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-benevolent-artificial-intelligence/
I agree it is weak (but it’s something) and I completely agree with your points, I was just adding a data point which seems to refute this quote.
“Anthropic founders haven’t said a word about philanthropy in >3 years or something AFAIK”
To be clear, the average billionaire talks about the great things they will do with their money constantly. I put relatively low weight on this. I would love to see Anthropic founders do/say something like “each of the 7 founders are selling a combined $1B of their stock and we are keeping none of it. It is all going to these organizations. AI is going to change the world rapidly and we expect a lot more money to flow to the philanthropic sector and we want to get this money out the door since they need time. It is a very small percentage of our stakes and our board has signed off.”
Are you taking bets on whether the Anthropic founders will donate more than 1B before 2030? I think there is a lot of information that should update our “average billionaire” prior (e.g. https://blog.givewell.org/2010/06/03/my-donation-for-2009-guest-post-from-dario-amodei/ )
Lorenzo, thanks for sharing that blog post. I didn’t know about that, though I know about many Anthropic founders’ previous affiliations with EA.
This is a slight update, but not enough to change my mind in the opposite direction. I already knew that Anthropic founders had a previous relationship to EA, and I don’t doubt that they have donated, maybe something on the order of 10% of their income to global health before Anthropic. I know Daniela is married to Holden. I know many Anthropic founders and staff are early signatories to the GWWC pledge. I know there was a group house, and I know that early on, Anthropic founders’ reasons for leaving OpenAI were around AI safety.
That said, my overall point still stands. They have greatly distanced themselves from EA and haven’t said anything public about it in years, apart from pretending they didn’t know what it was and other strange statements. Most of all, the base rate of sticking to a pledge like this is very low.
$1B is a very low number over 4-5 years, given their wealth and how much it could grow. I’d also be interested in any donations they have made privately in the last few years (remember, they still earn decent salaries and, above all, could liquidate some stock).
I would bet that Dario Amodei makes <$1B in donations before June 2027, self-reported (money has to move, not just say some shiboleth about donating the money in the future) at 50⁄50 odds. Any 501(c)(3) would count.
Edit: Sorry, one more thing. I know many Anthropic employees and know about the donation match. I think many employees at Anthropic who intend to, and I believe will, donate significant amounts to charity over the next few years. Some have already started. I salute them, believe their intentions, and admire them. I merely think we have to go “bottom up” in counting these donations as opposed to “top-down,” where we assess a person and their intentions and what they will give to.
Thanks!
Not sure how much it matters, but the blog post mentions $10,000 to GiveWell alone, which was likely significantly more than 10% of a graduate student’s income.
Yeah I agree, for what it’s worth I would expect (with low confidence) they’ll donate significantly more. But in general, for most planning, it doesn’t matter how much they give in relative terms but in absolute terms.
A larger update for me was looking at GiveWell’s public board meeting records, in particular Daniela Amodei is the person evaluating GiveWell’s CEO, and seems an active board member here
Something interesting/unique about Anthropic’s situation is that all 7 cofounders are now likely worth >$10B, so even if Dario doesn’t donate much there’s still a good chance others do (but obviously they’re correlated.)
Personally, I’m most uncertain about whether they’ll end up donating significantly to improve the welfare of biological beings vs focusing on digital beings. I expect them to take machine welfare quite seriously and increasingly so, and that to be something that markets and other funders won’t care as much about.
I think it’s also possible that they end up donating after 2027, timing donations around a potential critical transition period, and of course they have strong incentives to focus most of their capital to on winning the race.
Yep I 100 percent agree.