Legal template for conditional gift deed as an alternative to wagers on AI doom
I have donated $5,000 to a charity of Greg Colbourn’s choice (in this case, PauseAI US).
Separately, Greg has promised to give me (or donate to a charity of my choice) $3,125 in July 2026 and $4,375 in January 2028 ($7500 total, inflation adjusted), conditional on the world population of biological humans being above 1 billion people at each of those points in time.
One motivating factor for making this post is that sharing a legal template might allow more people to make similar arrangements, if it suits them, since a bottleneck for uptake of something like this seems to be legal enforceability (though obviously this isn’t at all a guarantee—this is closer to the most easily accessible option for me rather than optimised for legal enforceability). This isn’t the exact wording used in our agreement, but should be a reasonable template that people are free to use and improve on.[1]
My understanding is that Greg’s preferences for similar agreements are in the 10k-250k range, while preferring longer timelines (e.g. ~5 years/2030), and preferably with non-EA donors or donors that counterfactually wouldn’t donate to PauseAI US / PauseAI / other EA causes, but there may be others who would take Greg’s views (e.g. because they see this as a de facto financing method with high expected value given their views on near-term AI risk). Something like S&P 500 share equivalents is also an option worth considering instead of cash / donations, though I don’t know how this might impact legal enforceability.
The implied odds are less favourable than Vasco’s bet for non-timeline reasons on Greg’s end, but still higher than my personal best guess.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to @Greg_Colbourn ⏸️ for this arrangement, @Tyrone-Jay Barugh for the legal template, and @Holly Elmore ⏸️ 🔸 for conversations around PauseAI US.
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Not a lawyer / this isn’t legal advice, etc.
Neat!
Quick point: The “Template Here” link doesn’t have the right access.
Thanks for the catch! It was meant to be the same link as above; fixed
Thanks I absolutely love this, and would be willing to do this same thing with the same ratio with half the size of the donation (2500) - I just don’t have much money lol. I would also be willing to use a 5 billion global population threshold, although I doubt that makes much difference—if we go down to 5 billion we probably go down to 1...
I don’t really consider it a wager as such, more a donation trade or something (I’m sure others can think of a better name)
If I can help make AI Doom .000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent less likely while getting more return than market growth to the charity of my choice, what’s there not to love?
Quick question what do you mean by “inflation adjusted” on the 7500 exactly?
Nice one
RE: inflation adjusted this just means that we’re using the value of USD in 2025 rather than at the time of resolution; $1000 in 2000 is worth like $1200 now for example.
PauseAI US thanks you for your donation, Bruce! Anyone else who wants to make us the beneficiary of a wager is highly encouraged :)
Nice!