Around $50 million was spent on reducing catastrophic risks from AI in 2020 — while billions were spent advancing AI capabilities. While we are seeing increasing concern from AI experts, we estimate there are still only around 400 people working directly on reducing the chances of an AI-related existential catastrophe (with a 90% confidence interval ranging between 200 and 1,000). Of these, it seems like about three quarters are working on technical AI safety research, with the rest split between strategy (and other governance) research and advocacy.
Something that might be helpful, from 80,000 hours: