Are there any actual rigorous calculations on this? It’s hard for me to believe someone making $2M/year and donating $1M/year (to AI Safety or top GW charities) would have less counterfactual impact than someone working at CEA.
Edit: Let’s say you are donating $1M/year to AI Safety, that might be about enough to cover the salary for about 9 independent alignment researchers. Though, those 9 researchers might not be yet comparable to top-level researchers who would get funding regardless. So, it would probably end up as additional funding for getting more young people in the field (and give them at least a years worth of funding). And I guess there are some other potentially valuable things like becoming a public figure. In this case, you’d have to estimate that the value you bring to CEA is worth more than that.
The claim isn’t that every person is better off doing direct work than donating to every organization. Just the specific claim that I generally prefer the labor of my top candidate to donations.
Even in your example though: if you are (say) an ML engineer senior enough to be donating $1M+/year, I expect that those nine junior researchers might prefer your mentorship to your money.
(I really want to emphasize Yonatan’s point of actually doing the math though. The thing I dislike is when people just assume that their current path is obviously correct, and don’t actually bother to find some junior researchers and ask them if they would prefer money versus mentorship.)
Are there any actual rigorous calculations on this? It’s hard for me to believe someone making $2M/year and donating $1M/year (to AI Safety or top GW charities) would have less counterfactual impact than someone working at CEA.
Edit: Let’s say you are donating $1M/year to AI Safety, that might be about enough to cover the salary for about 9 independent alignment researchers. Though, those 9 researchers might not be yet comparable to top-level researchers who would get funding regardless. So, it would probably end up as additional funding for getting more young people in the field (and give them at least a years worth of funding). And I guess there are some other potentially valuable things like becoming a public figure. In this case, you’d have to estimate that the value you bring to CEA is worth more than that.
The claim isn’t that every person is better off doing direct work than donating to every organization. Just the specific claim that I generally prefer the labor of my top candidate to donations.
Even in your example though: if you are (say) an ML engineer senior enough to be donating $1M+/year, I expect that those nine junior researchers might prefer your mentorship to your money.
(I really want to emphasize Yonatan’s point of actually doing the math though. The thing I dislike is when people just assume that their current path is obviously correct, and don’t actually bother to find some junior researchers and ask them if they would prefer money versus mentorship.)
Ben, thanks for agreeing with me, I just wanted to say that my point isn’t “do the math”, it’s “ask the org”
Specifically I think “doing the math” is very hard, and even harder when you’re not in touch with the relevant stakeholders