I estimate the expected impact of an additional early-career AI safety researcher by combining assumptions about AI risk, tractability, counterfactual replaceability, and population at stake to express the result in GiveWell-equivalent terms. Under what I believe are very conservative inputs, the estimate is on the order of a few million dollars per year in equivalent donations. The results are very sensitive to some unkown parameters, though. Access the calculator/​model used here (tweakable to a wide range of beliefs and judgements).
In short, I think the competing earning-to-give number is $5M/​yr (or so), not $80k/​yr.
Your post reminded me to revive this project from my drafts and publish it:
https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​y7BGB3ikhN4RNzAq5/​​what-is-the-expected-value-of-working-on-ai-safety-i-ran-the. TL;DR below:
In short, I think the competing earning-to-give number is $5M/​yr (or so), not $80k/​yr.