The reason Eliezer gets paid so much is because a donor specifically requested it. The express purpose of the donation was to make Eliezer rich enough that he could afford to say “actually AI risk isn’t a big deal” and shut down MIRI without putting himself in a difficult financial situation.
(I don’t know about Nate’s salary but $235K looks pretty reasonable to me? That’s less than a mid-level software engineer makes.)
Edit Feb 2: Apparently the donation I was thinking of is separate from Eliezer’s salary, see his comment
I’m not sure how they decide on what salaries to pay themselves. But the reason they have the money to pay themselves those salaries in the first place is that MIRI’s donors believe there’s a significant chance of AI destroying the world within the next 5-20 years and that MIRI (especially Yudkowsky) is uniquely positioned to prevent this from happening.
Why are they paid so much?
Copying from my other comment:
The reason Eliezer gets paid so much is because a donor specifically requested it. The express purpose of the donation was to make Eliezer rich enough that he could afford to say “actually AI risk isn’t a big deal” and shut down MIRI without putting himself in a difficult financial situation.(I don’t know about Nate’s salary but $235K looks pretty reasonable to me? That’s less than a mid-level software engineer makes.)
Edit Feb 2: Apparently the donation I was thinking of is separate from Eliezer’s salary, see his comment
I’m not sure how they decide on what salaries to pay themselves. But the reason they have the money to pay themselves those salaries in the first place is that MIRI’s donors believe there’s a significant chance of AI destroying the world within the next 5-20 years and that MIRI (especially Yudkowsky) is uniquely positioned to prevent this from happening.