If you’re an AI safety donor, the value of different donation opportunities can depend a lot on your worldview; every grantmaker (except Survival and Flourishing Fund, which doesn’t take donations from small donors AFAIK) has a worldview in a particular cluster*; many individuals don’t share that worldview; and if you don’t share that worldview, most of the grants that big grantmakers make don’t look ideal.
At one point the same was true in animal welfare where grantmakers didn’t make grants to “weird” stuff like wild animal welfare or shrimp welfare, but that’s becoming less true lately because grantmakers have been branching out more (which IMO is a positive development).
*my best attempt at concisely summarizing it is on the spectrum from Eliezer Yudkowsky to Paul Christiano, all the grantmakers (except for SFF) are much more on the Christiano side.
If you’re an AI safety donor, the value of different donation opportunities can depend a lot on your worldview; every grantmaker (except Survival and Flourishing Fund, which doesn’t take donations from small donors AFAIK) has a worldview in a particular cluster*; many individuals don’t share that worldview; and if you don’t share that worldview, most of the grants that big grantmakers make don’t look ideal.
At one point the same was true in animal welfare where grantmakers didn’t make grants to “weird” stuff like wild animal welfare or shrimp welfare, but that’s becoming less true lately because grantmakers have been branching out more (which IMO is a positive development).
*my best attempt at concisely summarizing it is on the spectrum from Eliezer Yudkowsky to Paul Christiano, all the grantmakers (except for SFF) are much more on the Christiano side.