There are at least three common justifications for not donating, each of which can be quite reasonable:
A high standard of living and saving up money are important selfish wants for EAs in AI, just as they are in broader society.
EAs in AI have needs (either career or personal) that require lots of money.
Donations are much lower impact than one’s career.
I don’t donate to charity other than animal product offsets; this is mainly due to 1 and 2. As for 1, I’m still early career enough that immediate financial stability is a concern. Also for me, forgoing luxuries like restaurant food and travel makes me demotivated enough that I have difficulty working. I have tried to solve this in the past but have basically given up and now treat these luxuries as partially needs rather than wants.
For people just above the top-1% threshold of $65,000, 3 and 2 are very likely. $65,000 is roughly the rate paid to marginal AI safety researchers, so donating 20% will bring only 20% of someone’s career impact even if the grantmakers find an opportunity as good as themself. If they also live in a HCOL area, 2 is very likely—in San Francisco the average rent for a 1bed is $2,962/​month and an individual making less than $104,000 qualifies for public housing assistance!
But shouldn’t I have more dedication to the cause and donate anyway? I would prefer to instead spend more effort on getting better at my job (since I’m nowhere near the extremely high skillcap of AI safety research) and working more hours (possibly in ways that funge with donations eg by helping out grantmakers). I actually do care about saving for retirement, and finding a higher-paying job at a lab safety team just so I can donate is probably counterproductive, because trying to split one’s effort between two theories of change while compromising on both is generally bad (see the multipliers post). If I happened to get an equally impactful job that paid double, I would probably start donating after about a year, or sooner if donations were urgent and I expected high job security.
There are at least three common justifications for not donating, each of which can be quite reasonable:
A high standard of living and saving up money are important selfish wants for EAs in AI, just as they are in broader society.
EAs in AI have needs (either career or personal) that require lots of money.
Donations are much lower impact than one’s career.
I don’t donate to charity other than animal product offsets; this is mainly due to 1 and 2. As for 1, I’m still early career enough that immediate financial stability is a concern. Also for me, forgoing luxuries like restaurant food and travel makes me demotivated enough that I have difficulty working. I have tried to solve this in the past but have basically given up and now treat these luxuries as partially needs rather than wants.
For people just above the top-1% threshold of $65,000, 3 and 2 are very likely. $65,000 is roughly the rate paid to marginal AI safety researchers, so donating 20% will bring only 20% of someone’s career impact even if the grantmakers find an opportunity as good as themself. If they also live in a HCOL area, 2 is very likely—in San Francisco the average rent for a 1bed is $2,962/​month and an individual making less than $104,000 qualifies for public housing assistance!
But shouldn’t I have more dedication to the cause and donate anyway? I would prefer to instead spend more effort on getting better at my job (since I’m nowhere near the extremely high skillcap of AI safety research) and working more hours (possibly in ways that funge with donations eg by helping out grantmakers). I actually do care about saving for retirement, and finding a higher-paying job at a lab safety team just so I can donate is probably counterproductive, because trying to split one’s effort between two theories of change while compromising on both is generally bad (see the multipliers post). If I happened to get an equally impactful job that paid double, I would probably start donating after about a year, or sooner if donations were urgent and I expected high job security.