Beyond transparently disclosing financial and personal relationships with (e.g.) podcast guests or grantees, EA institutions should avoid apparent conflicts of interest more strictly. For example, grant reviewers should recuse themselves from reviewing proposals by their housemates.
Does it? The Doing EA Better post made it sound like conflict-of-interest statements are standard (or were at one point), but recusal is not, at least for the Long-Term Future Fund. There’s also this Open Philanthropy OpenAI grant, which is infamous enough that even I know about it. That was in 2017, though, so maybe it doesn’t happen anymore.
OpenAI researchers Dario Amodei and Paul Christiano are both technical advisors to Open Philanthropy and live in the same house as Holden. In addition, Holden is engaged to Dario’s sister Daniela.
Holden is Holden Karnofsky, at the time OP’s Executive Director, who also joined OpenAI’s board as part of the partnership initiated by the grant. Presumably he wasn’t the grant investigator (not named), just the chief authority of their employer. OP’s description of their process does not suggest that he or the OP technical advisors from OpenAI held themselves at any remove from the investigation or decision to recommend the grant:
OpenAI initially approached Open Philanthropy about potential funding for safety research, and we responded with the proposal for this grant. Subsequent discussions included visits to OpenAI’s office, conversations with OpenAI’s leadership, and discussions with a number of other organizations (including safety-focused organizations and AI labs), as well as with our technical advisors.
No, Dario Amodei and Paul Christiano were at the time employed by OpenAI, the recipient of the $30M grant. They were associated with Open Philanthropy in an advisory role.
I’m not trying to voice an opinion on whether this particular grant recommendation was unprincipled. I do think that things like this undermine trust in EA institutions, set a bad example, and make it hard to get serious concerns heard. Adopting a standard of avoiding appearance of impropriety can head off these concerns and relieve us of trying to determine on a case-by-case basis how fishy something is (without automatically accusing anyone of impropriety).
Beyond transparently disclosing financial and personal relationships with (e.g.) podcast guests or grantees, EA institutions should avoid apparent conflicts of interest more strictly. For example, grant reviewers should recuse themselves from reviewing proposals by their housemates.
I’d be curious to hear disagreements with this.
I guess the latter half of this suggestion already happens.
Does it? The Doing EA Better post made it sound like conflict-of-interest statements are standard (or were at one point), but recusal is not, at least for the Long-Term Future Fund. There’s also this Open Philanthropy OpenAI grant, which is infamous enough that even I know about it. That was in 2017, though, so maybe it doesn’t happen anymore.
Sorry what was the CoI with that OpenAI grant?
I’m mainly referring to this, at the bottom:
Holden is Holden Karnofsky, at the time OP’s Executive Director, who also joined OpenAI’s board as part of the partnership initiated by the grant. Presumably he wasn’t the grant investigator (not named), just the chief authority of their employer. OP’s description of their process does not suggest that he or the OP technical advisors from OpenAI held themselves at any remove from the investigation or decision to recommend the grant:
Hm. I still don’t really see the issue here. These people all work at OpenPhil right?
I guess maybe it looks fishy, but in hindsight do we think it was?
No, Dario Amodei and Paul Christiano were at the time employed by OpenAI, the recipient of the $30M grant. They were associated with Open Philanthropy in an advisory role.
I’m not trying to voice an opinion on whether this particular grant recommendation was unprincipled. I do think that things like this undermine trust in EA institutions, set a bad example, and make it hard to get serious concerns heard. Adopting a standard of avoiding appearance of impropriety can head off these concerns and relieve us of trying to determine on a case-by-case basis how fishy something is (without automatically accusing anyone of impropriety).