I’ve written before that I am skeptical that the amount of funding being hypothesized is going to materialize in the quantities people seem to be suggesting/speculating. If I were to summarize that argument, Anthropic founders haven’t said a word about philanthropy in >3 years or something AFAIK, and yet we are just assuming they are going to donate 80% of their wealth. Furthermore, the base rates on people saying they are going to donate large sums and then following through is very low.
More importantly, though, it is just very hard to start an organization that can handle large amounts of money effectively until you have money to start with. How are you supposed to get to work until you have money to start with? I don’t think this is a chicken-and-egg problem so much as a more blanket “first the money is in the account, then you start”.
As an example, right now, there is an urgent need to get funds to stop the Save Our Bacon Act that could preempt any future farmed animal welfare legislation in the leader of the free world, the United States (as in, we cannot do any of our current best and most cost effective ideas if this passes) and we are struggling to get enough money (we are at $10M right now and we are being outspent).
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/
I’ve spoke to half a dozen or so founders within global wellbeing- all are scrambling for non-donor ways of making money or accepting that if their next grant proposal fails they have to shut down / fire most their staff. Nobody mentioned having seen an influx of interest from Anthropic staff, or anyone else, preparing their plans for who to donate to. If anything, there’s fewer donors and less money.
I’d been keen to hear from people in other cause areas on whether they’ve observed any evidence of increased funding ahead.
Yeah, the funding situation in nuclear security is still dire. Depending on how you count, the cuts in US government funding various things that charities may want to make up for were greater than $50 billion per year.
Marcus names the sequencing problem accurately. “First the money, then you start” describes how most capacity-building works.
Historical patterns suggest one partial exception. Routing infrastructure — the layer that reduces transaction cost and vets novel cause areas before capital arrives — tends to develop most durably under resource constraint. The organizations that successfully absorbed the Rockefeller and Carnegie waves didn’t build after the money landed. They built the intake logic first, under pressure, without knowing the scale of what was coming.
The chicken-and-egg may dissolve if the question shifts from “how do we build organizations?” to “what does the intake layer look like before the flood?” Those seem like different problems with different sequencing requirements.
I’ve written before that I am skeptical that the amount of funding being hypothesized is going to materialize in the quantities people seem to be suggesting/speculating. If I were to summarize that argument, Anthropic founders haven’t said a word about philanthropy in >3 years or something AFAIK, and yet we are just assuming they are going to donate 80% of their wealth. Furthermore, the base rates on people saying they are going to donate large sums and then following through is very low.
More importantly, though, it is just very hard to start an organization that can handle large amounts of money effectively until you have money to start with. How are you supposed to get to work until you have money to start with? I don’t think this is a chicken-and-egg problem so much as a more blanket “first the money is in the account, then you start”.
As an example, right now, there is an urgent need to get funds to stop the Save Our Bacon Act that could preempt any future farmed animal welfare legislation in the leader of the free world, the United States (as in, we cannot do any of our current best and most cost effective ideas if this passes) and we are struggling to get enough money (we are at $10M right now and we are being outspent).
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”
I’ve spoke to half a dozen or so founders within global wellbeing- all are scrambling for non-donor ways of making money or accepting that if their next grant proposal fails they have to shut down / fire most their staff. Nobody mentioned having seen an influx of interest from Anthropic staff, or anyone else, preparing their plans for who to donate to. If anything, there’s fewer donors and less money.
I’d been keen to hear from people in other cause areas on whether they’ve observed any evidence of increased funding ahead.
Yeah, the funding situation in nuclear security is still dire. Depending on how you count, the cuts in US government funding various things that charities may want to make up for were greater than $50 billion per year.
Marcus names the sequencing problem accurately. “First the money, then you start” describes how most capacity-building works.
Historical patterns suggest one partial exception. Routing infrastructure — the layer that reduces transaction cost and vets novel cause areas before capital arrives — tends to develop most durably under resource constraint. The organizations that successfully absorbed the Rockefeller and Carnegie waves didn’t build after the money landed. They built the intake logic first, under pressure, without knowing the scale of what was coming.
The chicken-and-egg may dissolve if the question shifts from “how do we build organizations?” to “what does the intake layer look like before the flood?” Those seem like different problems with different sequencing requirements.