Eevee🔹

[Question] What are typ­i­cal pay­ment terms for a grant-funded pro­ject con­tract?

• Eevee🔹 14 Jan 2025 18:20 UTC

  2 points

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  on: The ugly sides of two ap­proaches to charity

  Great piece! I noticed that you wrote “Goldstein” a few times.

• Eevee🔹 12 Jan 2025 8:44 UTC

  4 points

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  in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

  I think this is a really thoughtful and constructive critique – thanks for sharing! I think you raise a great point about varying the depth of due diligence needed for donors based on the volume of their donations.

• Eevee🔹 10 Jan 2025 23:12 UTC

  6 points

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  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

  Larks, I’ve noticed that your comments on this post focus on criticizing the specific rules in the CC donor policy document that I shared as an example for other EA organizations to consider. You rightly point out that some of these rules might be impractical for EA orgs to follow. However, I feel frustrated because I think your responses have missed the point of my original post, which was to highlight the value of having a written donor screening policy, and to offer the CC document as a resource that other orgs can legally copy and adapt to their own needs (under the CC-BY license), rather than to recommend that others adopt the policy verbatim.

  I would appreciate it if we could keep the conversation focused on discussing the broader idea of implementing donor screening policies or processes for EA orgs, rather than getting bogged down in the specifics of this document tearing down this specific policy without suggesting alternatives. By focusing on the bigger picture, we can ensure that EA organizations develop systems that promote transparency and trust, especially in light of past controversies such as FTX. I think this approach would help build more confidence in the community, while still allowing for flexibility in implementation.

  If you have thoughts on how these policies or processes could be better adapted to fit the needs of EA organizations, I’d be glad to discuss them here. I hope we can continue this conversation in a collaborative and constructive way.

• Eevee🔹 10 Jan 2025 9:26 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

  Also, what makes PopVax “high-risk” according to CC’s criteria, in your opinion?

• Eevee🔹 10 Jan 2025 9:23 UTC

  6 points

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  in reply to: huw’s comment on: Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

  Is this what you have in mind?

• Eevee🔹 10 Jan 2025 9:13 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

  I just posted the CC policy as an example of a donor screening policy, and by posting it I don’t necessarily endorse its exact contents. As you helpfully pointed out, the terms of this policy could be overbroad and burdensome, and would have to be adapted to the different context in which EA orgs operate.

  “a $10k donation from a Palantir employee would simply be totally prohibited”

  First, many EAs donate a lot more money ($1-10k/​year) than the average non-EA donor, so $10k would likely be on the high end for a gift to CC but typical for an EA org. So I think the threshold for an EA org to scrutinize a donor should be much higher than CC’s threshold - $50-100k might be appropriate.

  Second, by “totally prohibited” I think you are referring to the section on exclusionary criteria. The most relevant criteria for your Palantir example might be these ones:

  the Donor’s involvement in:

  1. The manufacture or sale of arms, including any direct or indirect involvement in the manufacture or sale of illegal or controversial weapons;

  2. International crimes; this encompasses International crimes as defined in treaty and customary law, which include violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and violations of International Human Rights Law (IHRL), such as crimes against humanity, genocide, torture; as well as other international crimes such as piracy, transnational organized crime, human trafficking, financing of terrorism, amongst others;

  Even if taken literally, this would only apply to Palantir employees who work directly on weapons systems or any software that is being used to commit violations of international law (such as war crimes). Palantir has branches that work with the private sector, and most employees there would likely be exempt.

  That said, if it applied to literally all employees who worked on a particular project at Palantir, it’s probably too broad. Taking money from rank-and-file employees of Palantir (or any large tech company) is unlikely to bring CC into disrepute, but taking money from a senior executive might. (That said, there is a group trying to disparage the events startup Partiful based on its founding employees’ connections to Palantir, though it’s hard to say how much influence they will have.)

  Decisions are taken after thorough examination of such Donation [emphasis added]

  As @huw suggested in another comment, this could be outsourced to an organization or team that can do centralized donor vetting and risk scoring for the whole EA community. Impact Ops comes to mind (and in fact does this).

Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

• Eevee🔹 27 Dec 2024 17:33 UTC

  4 points

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  on: OpenAI’s new structure

  Our impact is not just what we create ourselves, but how we influence others. In part due to our progress⁠, there’s vibrant⁠ competition⁠ in the space, from commercial products similar to ChatGPT to open source LLMs, and vigorous innovation⁠ on⁠ safety⁠.

  Color me cynical. OpenAI cites its own, Anthropic’s, and DeepMind’s approaches to AI safety. However, Meta has also expressed an ambition to build AGI but doesn’t seem to prioritize safety in the same way.

• Eevee🔹 27 Dec 2024 17:11 UTC

  3 points

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  on: eve­lyn­ciara’s Shortform

  EA Forum Wrapped 2024 👀

• Eevee🔹 20 Dec 2024 22:22 UTC

  2 points

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  on: EA Fo­rum au­dio: help us choose the new voice

  Thanks for all your hard work on the audio narrations and making EA Forum content accessible!

  Question: Do you intend to license the audio under a Creative Commons license? Since EA Forum text since 2022 is licensed under CC-BY 4.0, all that’s legally required is any attribution info provided by the source material and a link to the license; derived works don’t have to be also licensed under CC-BY. However, to the extent that AI-generated narrations can be protected by copyright at all (e.g. in the UK and Hong Kong), it seems appropriate to use CC-BY, or maybe CC-BY-SA to enforce modifications being under the same terms.

• Eevee🔹 19 Dec 2024 0:06 UTC

  2 points

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  on: Prize Money ($100) for Valid Tech­ni­cal Ob­jec­tions to Icesteading

  PayPal as in PYUSD or fiat money sent thru PayPal?

• Eevee🔹 5 Dec 2024 2:40 UTC

  6 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Xing Shi Cai’s comment on: Fac­tory farm­ing as a press­ing world problem

  EA Forum posts since 2022 are licensed under CC-BY, so they are free to use. If you want to translate any portions of the 80k page that aren’t part of this forum post, you should ask them.

[Question] How com­mit­ted to AGI safety are the cur­rent OpenAI non­profit board mem­bers?

• Eevee🔹 28 Nov 2024 7:14 UTC

  4 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Julia_Wise🔸’s comment on: Ju­lia_Wise’s Shortform

  As the Flag begins to burn, salute the flag, say the Pledge of Allegiance, and pause for a moment of silence.

  I did not know this. That’s wild.

• Eevee🔹 28 Nov 2024 5:13 UTC

  −1 points

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  in reply to: Austin’s comment on: Has your or­gani­sa­tion lost fund­ing due to the Good Ven­tures fund­ing shift? Have you man­aged to re­place it?

  OP/​GV/​Dustin do not like the rationalism brand because it attracts right-coded folks

  Open Phil does not want to fund anything that is even slightly right of center in any policy work

  I think this is specifically about the rat community attracting people with racist views like “human biodiversity” (which you alluded to re: “our speaker choices at Manifest”) and not about being right-wing or right-leaning generally. As a counterexample, OP made three grants to the Niskanen Center to fund their immigration policy work. I would characterize Niskanen as centrist with a libertarian bent and not definitively right-leaning, but they were originally an offshoot of the right-libertarian movement. Niskanen was founded by people from the Cato Institute and has been funded by “donors who seek to counter libertarian-conservative hostility to measures against global warming.”^[1]

  OP also supported the Nolan Center for Justice at the American Conservative Union, the organization that runs CPAC, in 2021 as part of their criminal justice reform program. At a quick glance, most of the groups they supported through their CJR program appear to be left-leaning, but it is untrue that OP has not funded anything right-leaning. Perhaps OP should be more willing to do the kind of cross-partisan grantmaking that their CJR program embodied.

  1. ^

     Niskanen Center on Wikipedia

• Eevee🔹 24 Nov 2024 18:19 UTC

  7 points

  1 ∶ 7

  on: eve­lyn­ciara’s Shortform

  Epistemic status: preliminary take, likely not considering many factors.

  I’m starting to think that economic development and animal welfare go hand in hand. Since the end of the COVID pandemic, the plant-based meat industry has declined in large part because consumers’ disposable incomes declined (at least in developed countries). It’s good that GFI and others are trying to achieve price parity with conventional meat. However, finding ways to increase disposable incomes (or equivalently, reduce the cost of living) will likely accelerate the adoption of meat substitutes, even if price parity isn’t reached.

[Question] What are some crit­i­cisms of PauseAI?

• Eevee🔹 22 Nov 2024 23:06 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Eevee🔹’s comment on: EAGxVir­tual 2024: Livestream and Dis­cus­sion Thread

  Update: The 2024 Donation Election is using straight-up ranked-choice voting; details here.

• Eevee🔹 18 Nov 2024 1:36 UTC

  4 points

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  in reply to: Sasha Berezhnoi 🔸’s comment on: EAGxVir­tual 2024: Livestream and Dis­cus­sion Thread

  In addition, I used to lead the EA Public Interest Tech Slack community, which was subsequently merged into the EA Software Engineers community (the Discord for which still exists btw). All of these communities eventually got merged into the #role-software-engineers channel of the EA Anywhere Slack.

  I think there was too much fragmentation among slightly different EA affinity groups aimed at tech professionals—there was also EA Tech Network for folks working at tech companies, which I believe was merged into High Impact Professionals.

  I’m not sure why the EA SWE community dissipated after all the consolidation that occurred. I think the lack of community leadership may have played a role. Also, it seems like EA SWEs are already well served by other communities, including AI safety (for which a lot of SWEs have the right skills) and effective giving communities like Giving What We Can (since many SWE roles are well-paid).