Which of these two sentences, both from the fund page, do you think describes the fund more accurately?
The Long-Term Future Fund aims to positively influence the long-term trajectory of civilization by making grants that address global catastrophic risks, especially potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence and pandemics. (First sentence of fund page.)
Grants so far have prioritized projects addressing risks posed by artificial intelligence, and the grantmakers expect to continue this at least in the short term. (Located 1500 words into fund page.)
I’d say 2 is clearly more accurate, and I think the feedback you’ve received about donors being surprised at how many AI grants were made suggests I’m not alone.
Could you operationalize “more accurately” a bit more? Both sentences match my impression of the fund. The first is more informative as to what our aims are, the second is more informative as to the details of our historical (and immediate future) grant composition.
My sense is that the first will give people an accurate predictive model of the LTFF in a wider range of scenarios. For example, if next round we happen to receive an amazing application for a new biosecurity org, the majority of the round’s funding could go on that. The first sentence would predict this, the second not.
But the second will give most people better predictions in a “business as usual” case, where our applications in future rounds are similar to those of current rounds.
My hunch is that knowing what our aims are is more important for most donors. In particular, many people reading this for the first time will be choosing between the LTFF and one of the other EA Funds, which focus on completely different cause areas. The high-level motivation seems more salient than our current grant composition for this purpose.
Ideally of course we’d communicate both. I’ll think about if we should add some kind of high-level summary of % of grants to different areas under the “Grantmaking and Impact” section which occurs earlier. My main worry is this kind of thing is hard to keep up to date, and as described above could end up misleading donors in the other direction, if our application pool suddenly changes.
Which of these two sentences, both from the fund page, do you think describes the fund more accurately?
The Long-Term Future Fund aims to positively influence the long-term trajectory of civilization by making grants that address global catastrophic risks, especially potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence and pandemics. (First sentence of fund page.)
Grants so far have prioritized projects addressing risks posed by artificial intelligence, and the grantmakers expect to continue this at least in the short term. (Located 1500 words into fund page.)
I’d say 2 is clearly more accurate, and I think the feedback you’ve received about donors being surprised at how many AI grants were made suggests I’m not alone.
Could you operationalize “more accurately” a bit more? Both sentences match my impression of the fund. The first is more informative as to what our aims are, the second is more informative as to the details of our historical (and immediate future) grant composition.
My sense is that the first will give people an accurate predictive model of the LTFF in a wider range of scenarios. For example, if next round we happen to receive an amazing application for a new biosecurity org, the majority of the round’s funding could go on that. The first sentence would predict this, the second not.
But the second will give most people better predictions in a “business as usual” case, where our applications in future rounds are similar to those of current rounds.
My hunch is that knowing what our aims are is more important for most donors. In particular, many people reading this for the first time will be choosing between the LTFF and one of the other EA Funds, which focus on completely different cause areas. The high-level motivation seems more salient than our current grant composition for this purpose.
Ideally of course we’d communicate both. I’ll think about if we should add some kind of high-level summary of % of grants to different areas under the “Grantmaking and Impact” section which occurs earlier. My main worry is this kind of thing is hard to keep up to date, and as described above could end up misleading donors in the other direction, if our application pool suddenly changes.