AI risk seems the least funding constrained. My guess is global poverty is more talent constrained than funding constrained, but still somewhat funding constrained. Animal cause seems the most funding constrained. EA orgs might fall between global poverty and AI risk.
I’m not sure I agree with these comparisons.
I think MIRI has a good case that they can hire top math talent without them being EAs, provided they get enough money in their fundraiser, which they suggest has as much as $5.4M in additional room for funding.
Meanwhile, global poverty also appears to have about as much room for more funding.
Animal causes have relatively much less room for more funding just because there’s much less infrastructure set up right now to spend those funds. I doubt animal causes could absorb any more than $2M productively right now. But I hope this could change over the next five years...
Of course, each of the cause areas also have a lot of room for exceptionally talented people to make them better. I imagine someone who can start a new global poverty charity as good as AMF should certainly do that, even if they could get an ETG job at $1M a year otherwise.
The extent to which a cause is funding constrained doesn’t equal the size of its room for more funding. It’s more to do with how much progress you can gain per unit of money compared to a unit of talent.
Global poverty has large room for more funding, but I still suspect it may be more talent constrained than funding constrained, because a talented person can do a lot more through setting up new nonprofits, policy or research than etg.
I agree MIRI has a funding gap, but all the other xrisk research groups have a lot of funds, and are concerned they may not find sufficiently good researchers to hire. Moreover, there are major donors (e.g. Open Phil) ready to put more funds into AI risk research, but don’t think there’s enough good people available to hire yet.
I’m not sure I agree with these comparisons.
I think MIRI has a good case that they can hire top math talent without them being EAs, provided they get enough money in their fundraiser, which they suggest has as much as $5.4M in additional room for funding.
Meanwhile, global poverty also appears to have about as much room for more funding.
Animal causes have relatively much less room for more funding just because there’s much less infrastructure set up right now to spend those funds. I doubt animal causes could absorb any more than $2M productively right now. But I hope this could change over the next five years...
Of course, each of the cause areas also have a lot of room for exceptionally talented people to make them better. I imagine someone who can start a new global poverty charity as good as AMF should certainly do that, even if they could get an ETG job at $1M a year otherwise.
The extent to which a cause is funding constrained doesn’t equal the size of its room for more funding. It’s more to do with how much progress you can gain per unit of money compared to a unit of talent.
Global poverty has large room for more funding, but I still suspect it may be more talent constrained than funding constrained, because a talented person can do a lot more through setting up new nonprofits, policy or research than etg.
I agree MIRI has a funding gap, but all the other xrisk research groups have a lot of funds, and are concerned they may not find sufficiently good researchers to hire. Moreover, there are major donors (e.g. Open Phil) ready to put more funds into AI risk research, but don’t think there’s enough good people available to hire yet.