For some people I think it is important to want more money, as they might have opportunities to use it quite effectively. I am mentioning this because I imagine some people might benefit from becoming more open to wanting a higher income. Sometimes people can be in a particularly good position to put more money to good use.
This advice is designed specifically for frontier AI companies—I definitely think there’s nothing wrong with wanting to earn more in most situations. Usually I would advise against giving 100% of your money over some threshold, precisely because it removes the personal incentive to earn more money. This is generally bad, unless of course you happen to be in a position where money may incentivize you to do bad things. Then removing that incentive is a very good idea.
I would give this same advice if someone were, say, considering leaving an animal advocacy group to join a meat producer, earn 3x the money, and lobby from the inside for better practices. Maybe this is the best move for animals, maybe not—but you should be very suspicious about this reasoning when it stands to benefit you financially. In this exact case, wanting more money is highly counterproductive to doing good, because it distorts your thinking. In most cases, this is not true, or is true to a much smaller extent.
Basically, the pattern is “If you would gain more money from joining the powerful people doing bad things, that’s a bad incentive structure and you should remove that incentive structure from yourself.”
For some people I think it is important to want more money, as they might have opportunities to use it quite effectively. I am mentioning this because I imagine some people might benefit from becoming more open to wanting a higher income. Sometimes people can be in a particularly good position to put more money to good use.
This advice is designed specifically for frontier AI companies—I definitely think there’s nothing wrong with wanting to earn more in most situations. Usually I would advise against giving 100% of your money over some threshold, precisely because it removes the personal incentive to earn more money. This is generally bad, unless of course you happen to be in a position where money may incentivize you to do bad things. Then removing that incentive is a very good idea.
I would give this same advice if someone were, say, considering leaving an animal advocacy group to join a meat producer, earn 3x the money, and lobby from the inside for better practices. Maybe this is the best move for animals, maybe not—but you should be very suspicious about this reasoning when it stands to benefit you financially. In this exact case, wanting more money is highly counterproductive to doing good, because it distorts your thinking. In most cases, this is not true, or is true to a much smaller extent.
Basically, the pattern is “If you would gain more money from joining the powerful people doing bad things, that’s a bad incentive structure and you should remove that incentive structure from yourself.”