I’m sympathetic to this point and stress that my argument above only applies if one is relatively optimistic about solving alignment and relatively pessimistic about these governance/policy problems. I don’t think I’m informed enough to be optimistic on alignment but I do feel very pessimistic on preventing immense wealth inequality. The amount of coordination between so many actors for this not to be the default seems unachievable to me.
This may be available elsewhere and I accept that I might not have looked hard enough, but are there impactful, funding-constrained donation opportunities to solve these problems?
It’s very tempting to be biased towards “the thing I should be doing is making money”. I’ve seen a shocking amount of E2Gers that don’t seem to do much giving, particularly in AI safety. There should be a small anti-correction bias against the thing you should be doing is making money and investing it to earn more money. That looks a lot like selfish non-impact.
£250k/year after taxes and expenses, just isn’t that much to donate. I think in the UK (where £250k/year would be paid) would incur income tax of ~35-40% depending on deductions. Let’s call it £95k. After say £45k/year in personal expenses (more if you have a family), we are talking about about £110k/year. Invested or not, this just isn’t that much money to move the needle on AI safety by enough to write home about. AI governance organizations would very happily have a very good mid to senior operations management roles at EA and adjacent organisations with longtermist focus or other role. These orgs spend £110k/year like its nothing.
Re. 2, that maths is the right ballpark is trying to save but if donating I do want to remind people that UK donations are tax-deductible and this deduction is not limited the way I gather it is in some countries like the US.
So you wouldn’t be paying £95k in taxes if donating a large fraction of £250k/yr. Doing quick calcs, if living off £45k then the split ends up being something like:
£110k seems like it would probably be impactful, and that’s just one person giving right? That’s probably at least one FTE. Also SERI MATS only costs about ~£500k per year so it could be expanded substantially with that amount.
This is generally less than one FTE for an AI safety organization. Remember, there are other costs than just salary.
MATS is spending far more than £500k/year. I don’t know how accurate it is but it looks like they might have spent ~$4.65MM. I’m happy to be corrected but I think my figure it more accurate.
I’m sympathetic to this point and stress that my argument above only applies if one is relatively optimistic about solving alignment and relatively pessimistic about these governance/policy problems. I don’t think I’m informed enough to be optimistic on alignment but I do feel very pessimistic on preventing immense wealth inequality. The amount of coordination between so many actors for this not to be the default seems unachievable to me.
This may be available elsewhere and I accept that I might not have looked hard enough, but are there impactful, funding-constrained donation opportunities to solve these problems?
The other two things I want to point out are:
It’s very tempting to be biased towards “the thing I should be doing is making money”. I’ve seen a shocking amount of E2Gers that don’t seem to do much giving, particularly in AI safety. There should be a small anti-correction bias against the thing you should be doing is making money and investing it to earn more money. That looks a lot like selfish non-impact.
£250k/year after taxes and expenses, just isn’t that much to donate. I think in the UK (where £250k/year would be paid) would incur income tax of ~35-40% depending on deductions. Let’s call it £95k. After say £45k/year in personal expenses (more if you have a family), we are talking about about £110k/year. Invested or not, this just isn’t that much money to move the needle on AI safety by enough to write home about. AI governance organizations would very happily have a very good mid to senior operations management roles at EA and adjacent organisations with longtermist focus or other role. These orgs spend £110k/year like its nothing.
Re. 2, that maths is the right ballpark is trying to save but if donating I do want to remind people that UK donations are tax-deductible and this deduction is not limited the way I gather it is in some countries like the US.
So you wouldn’t be paying £95k in taxes if donating a large fraction of £250k/yr. Doing quick calcs, if living off £45k then the split ends up being something like:
Income: 250k
Donations: 185k
Tax: 20k
Personal: 45k
(I agree with the spirit of your points.)
£110k seems like it would probably be impactful, and that’s just one person giving right? That’s probably at least one FTE. Also SERI MATS only costs about ~£500k per year so it could be expanded substantially with that amount.
This is generally less than one FTE for an AI safety organization. Remember, there are other costs than just salary.
MATS is spending far more than £500k/year. I don’t know how accurate it is but it looks like they might have spent ~$4.65MM. I’m happy to be corrected but I think my figure it more accurate.