I haven’t dived into the figures/calculation, but I’m pretty skeptical about donating 46% to regular animal welfare projects given AI progress. Is the AI discount just based on x-risk or does it account for the possibility of AI radically transforming the world in such a way that the impact of current charities becomes moot?
The way it practically works is a blanket cut on the overall cost-effectiveness. That could be because there is an x-risk, or because the effect of non-AI work is reduced or eliminated. For the current inputs, a 40% discount is applied, which I think is large enough to account for all those possibilities.
But perhaps the phrase “regular animal welfare” is potentially another source of disagreement? The funds we’re donating to are aware of AI’s impact on the world and seem likely to take steps to use AI to improve their outcomes. The current allocation is based on what specific interventions the AW funds are funding but it’s also worth explicitly noting that giving money to AW funds or AW groups isn’t a commitment to pursue the same interventions that exist today indefinitely (this same reasoning also applies to GHD funds). Perhaps current interventions become moot (that’s why we are discounting them) but it’s also possible, for example, that AW work could be more effective in the future because AI makes monitoring welfare vastly cheaper or, say, boosts the efficiency of animal groups.
All that said, if you think there should be a higher discount, you can apply it, but that doesn’t substantially change the results regarding what goes to AW. Indeed, if you increase the discount to 90%, you don’t get much more to AI (and less overall to GCRs as a whole, likely because the discount also applies to biorisk and nuclear weapons). Generally, this is because there are interaction effects between risk preferences, diminishing returns, overall cost-effectiveness, and how the worldviews are aggregated. Making everything else less cost-effective doesn’t change, say, that you have to have a certain risk attitude to take longer-shot bets at success.
The funds we’re donating to are aware of AI’s impact on the world and seem likely to take steps to use AI to improve their outcomes
There is definitely some correlation between current competence and ability to adapt to a changing world, though I suspect that there’s also a huge amount of stickiness that undermines this.
All that said, if you think there should be a higher discount, you can apply it, but that doesn’t substantially change the results regarding what goes to AW. Indeed, if you increase the discount to 90%, you don’t get much more to AI (and less overall to GCRs as a whole, likely because the discount also applies to biorisk and nuclear weapons)
Fascinating. Is biorisk depreciating because some of those projects have a long payoff time?
My intuition is that biorisk talent will be more easily redeployable in a world undergoing an AI transition than a lot of the animal talent (more sticky).
This is definitely an approximation, not based on a rigorous underlying model. I informally personally asked several people in the cause prio and AI spaces, including some at labs, to answer the question about what type of discount seemed appropriate and, along with my best judgment, settled on 40%.
I would very much like to improve this input in the future, perhaps through formal surveys or, perhaps, a Delphi panel-type process. Though I think my weakly held intuition here is a bigger possible change isn’t the precise value (which in the current model doesn’t change the result dramatically), but distinguishing between reduced effectiveness overall and probability of an effect going decreasing, with consideration of different time periods when those effects happen in each cause area.
Fascinating. Is biorisk depreciating because some of those projects have a long payoff time?
My intuition is that biorisk talent will be more easily redeployable in a world undergoing an AI transition than a lot of the animal talent (more sticky).
We included biorisk in the AI discount not just because of payoff times but because of the same type of uncertainty you raised about AW. That is, it seems possible the actions people are taking today could be mooted by changes in AI development.
It does seem possible that biorisk talent could potentially be more easily redeployable than AW. I would also add a couple more related additional considerations in what discount to use for biorisk: (i) some pathways to very negative outcomes for AI run through biorisk and (ii) it seems plausible to me that some civilizational hardening measures (i.e. more widely available PPE) seem perhaps more robust to AI uncertainty than some interventions in other cause areas because they act on AI risk itself given (i).
This is why in future versions of this model, I could imagine both nukes and biorisk having a different AI discount since there are clear interactions here between AI and these other GCRs.
I haven’t dived into the figures/calculation, but I’m pretty skeptical about donating 46% to regular animal welfare projects given AI progress. Is the AI discount just based on x-risk or does it account for the possibility of AI radically transforming the world in such a way that the impact of current charities becomes moot?
Hi Chris,
The way it practically works is a blanket cut on the overall cost-effectiveness. That could be because there is an x-risk, or because the effect of non-AI work is reduced or eliminated. For the current inputs, a 40% discount is applied, which I think is large enough to account for all those possibilities.
But perhaps the phrase “regular animal welfare” is potentially another source of disagreement? The funds we’re donating to are aware of AI’s impact on the world and seem likely to take steps to use AI to improve their outcomes. The current allocation is based on what specific interventions the AW funds are funding but it’s also worth explicitly noting that giving money to AW funds or AW groups isn’t a commitment to pursue the same interventions that exist today indefinitely (this same reasoning also applies to GHD funds). Perhaps current interventions become moot (that’s why we are discounting them) but it’s also possible, for example, that AW work could be more effective in the future because AI makes monitoring welfare vastly cheaper or, say, boosts the efficiency of animal groups.
All that said, if you think there should be a higher discount, you can apply it, but that doesn’t substantially change the results regarding what goes to AW. Indeed, if you increase the discount to 90%, you don’t get much more to AI (and less overall to GCRs as a whole, likely because the discount also applies to biorisk and nuclear weapons). Generally, this is because there are interaction effects between risk preferences, diminishing returns, overall cost-effectiveness, and how the worldviews are aggregated. Making everything else less cost-effective doesn’t change, say, that you have to have a certain risk attitude to take longer-shot bets at success.
How was the 40% figure calculated?
There is definitely some correlation between current competence and ability to adapt to a changing world, though I suspect that there’s also a huge amount of stickiness that undermines this.
Fascinating. Is biorisk depreciating because some of those projects have a long payoff time?
My intuition is that biorisk talent will be more easily redeployable in a world undergoing an AI transition than a lot of the animal talent (more sticky).
This is definitely an approximation, not based on a rigorous underlying model. I informally personally asked several people in the cause prio and AI spaces, including some at labs, to answer the question about what type of discount seemed appropriate and, along with my best judgment, settled on 40%.
I would very much like to improve this input in the future, perhaps through formal surveys or, perhaps, a Delphi panel-type process. Though I think my weakly held intuition here is a bigger possible change isn’t the precise value (which in the current model doesn’t change the result dramatically), but distinguishing between reduced effectiveness overall and probability of an effect going decreasing, with consideration of different time periods when those effects happen in each cause area.
We included biorisk in the AI discount not just because of payoff times but because of the same type of uncertainty you raised about AW. That is, it seems possible the actions people are taking today could be mooted by changes in AI development.
It does seem possible that biorisk talent could potentially be more easily redeployable than AW. I would also add a couple more related additional considerations in what discount to use for biorisk: (i) some pathways to very negative outcomes for AI run through biorisk and (ii) it seems plausible to me that some civilizational hardening measures (i.e. more widely available PPE) seem perhaps more robust to AI uncertainty than some interventions in other cause areas because they act on AI risk itself given (i).
This is why in future versions of this model, I could imagine both nukes and biorisk having a different AI discount since there are clear interactions here between AI and these other GCRs.