Right now we’re talent-constrained, but we’re also fairly well-positioned to solve that problem over the next six months. Jessica Taylor is joining us in august. We have another researcher or two pretty far along in the pipeline, and we’re running four or five more research workshops this summer, and CFAR is running a summer fellows program in July. It’s quite plausible that we’ll hire a handful of new researchers before the end of 2015, in which case our runway would start looking pretty short, and it’s pretty likely that we’ll be funding constrained again by the end of the year.
A modified version of this question: Assuming MIRI’s goal is saving the world (and not MIRI), at what funding level would MIRI recommend giving elsewhere, and where would it recommend giving?
I’m not sure how to interpret this question: are you asking how much money I’d like to see dumped on other people? I’d like to see lots of money dumped on lots of other people, and for now I’m going to delegate to the GiveWell, Open Philanthropy Project, and GoodVentures folks to figure out who and how much :-)
I think they mean “what is the quantity of funding at MIRI which would cause a shift in the best marginal use of money, and what organization would it switch to.”
mhpage, if this is not what you mean, let me know.
I’m not sure what the answer to this is going forward, but relevant things Nate said in response to other questions on this page:
[L]ast year, we directed a number of donors to FHI, who had much more of a funding gap than MIRI did at that time.
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[I]f we successfully execute on [growing the research team], then we’re going to be burning through money quite a bit faster than before. An FLI grant (if we get one) will certainly help, but I expect it’s going to be a little while before MIRI can support itself on large donations & grants alone.
I was assuming that MIRI’s position is that it presently is the most-effective recipient of funds, but that assumption might not be correct (which would itself be quite interesting).
To what degree is MIRI now restricted by lack of funding, and is there any amount of funding beyond which you could not make effective use of it?
Among recruiting new talent and having funding for new positions, what is the greatest bottleneck?
Right now we’re talent-constrained, but we’re also fairly well-positioned to solve that problem over the next six months. Jessica Taylor is joining us in august. We have another researcher or two pretty far along in the pipeline, and we’re running four or five more research workshops this summer, and CFAR is running a summer fellows program in July. It’s quite plausible that we’ll hire a handful of new researchers before the end of 2015, in which case our runway would start looking pretty short, and it’s pretty likely that we’ll be funding constrained again by the end of the year.
A modified version of this question: Assuming MIRI’s goal is saving the world (and not MIRI), at what funding level would MIRI recommend giving elsewhere, and where would it recommend giving?
I’m not sure how to interpret this question: are you asking how much money I’d like to see dumped on other people? I’d like to see lots of money dumped on lots of other people, and for now I’m going to delegate to the GiveWell, Open Philanthropy Project, and GoodVentures folks to figure out who and how much :-)
I think they mean “what is the quantity of funding at MIRI which would cause a shift in the best marginal use of money, and what organization would it switch to.”
mhpage, if this is not what you mean, let me know.
I’m not sure what the answer to this is going forward, but relevant things Nate said in response to other questions on this page:
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Indeed, that is what I meant.
I was assuming that MIRI’s position is that it presently is the most-effective recipient of funds, but that assumption might not be correct (which would itself be quite interesting).