Marcus Abramovitch 🔸

Karma: 4,213

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 9 Jun 2026 17:32 UTC
18 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: Noah Birnbaum’s Quick takes
I have so much intended writing on my plate and, unfortunately, little time to do it.
In a nutshell, I think some employees are dedicated EAs who will give a lot of money to causes I deeply care about. Some of them have a binding agreement to donate a portion of their stock (and a match).
I don’t trust the founders. There is no legal mechanism I know of that binds them. The base rate of people effectively giving away large sums of wealth, even when they said they would, is shockingly low. They have said nothing EA-related in years apart from distancing themselves.
That said, I agree that Anthropic has a much more EA culture, for whatever that is worth. A lot of their employees are genuine EAs.
Being in San Francisco already warps your view of the world. Being inside Anthropic’s doors must do more. I expect them to probably be above-average, typical billionaires, but to have their views on the world be changed by their experiences of the last few years and years to come.
@NickLaing I don’t need their money, I’ll say what I want. I think too highly of some of their employees to believe that my saying something bad about them that I thought was true would cause them to not listen to things I say or donate money differently than they thought optimal. If I’m wrong, I will happily eat my words.

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 9 Jun 2026 15:43 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lorenzo Buonanno🔸’s comment on: Philanthropy Needs Ambitious Projects Immediately
Lorenzo, thanks for sharing that blog post. I didn’t know about that, though I know about many Anthropic founders’ previous affiliations with EA.
This is a slight update, but not enough to change my mind in the opposite direction. I already knew that Anthropic founders had a previous relationship to EA, and I don’t doubt that they have donated, maybe something on the order of 10% of their income to global health before Anthropic. I know Daniela is married to Holden. I know many Anthropic founders and staff are early signatories to the GWWC pledge. I know there was a group house, and I know that early on, Anthropic founders’ reasons for leaving OpenAI were around AI safety.
That said, my overall point still stands. They have greatly distanced themselves from EA and haven’t said anything public about it in years, apart from pretending they didn’t know what it was and other strange statements. Most of all, the base rate of sticking to a pledge like this is very low.
$1B is a very low number over 4-5 years, given their wealth and how much it could grow. I’d also be interested in any donations they have made privately in the last few years (remember, they still earn decent salaries and, above all, could liquidate some stock).
I would bet that Dario Amodei makes <$1B in donations before June 2027, self-reported (money has to move, not just say some shiboleth about donating the money in the future) at ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ odds. Any 501(c)(3) would count.
Edit: Sorry, one more thing. I know many Anthropic employees and know about the donation match. I think many employees at Anthropic who intend to, and I believe will, donate significant amounts to charity over the next few years. Some have already started. I salute them, believe their intentions, and admire them. I merely think we have to go “bottom up” in counting these donations as opposed to “top-down,” where we assess a person and their intentions and what they will give to.

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 8 Jun 2026 18:42 UTC
7 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: James Greathouse’s comment on: Philanthropy Needs Ambitious Projects Immediately
Can you stop with the LLM outputs?

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 8 Jun 2026 3:46 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: Philanthropy Needs Ambitious Projects Immediately
To be clear, the average billionaire talks about the great things they will do with their money constantly. I put relatively low weight on this. I would love to see Anthropic founders do/say something like “each of the 7 founders are selling a combined $1B of their stock and we are keeping none of it. It is all going to these organizations. AI is going to change the world rapidly and we expect a lot more money to flow to the philanthropic sector and we want to get this money out the door since they need time. It is a very small percentage of our stakes and our board has signed off.”

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 6 Jun 2026 17:33 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: James Greathouse’s comment on: Philanthropy Needs Ambitious Projects Immediately
I didn’t understand what this meant. Can you try to rephrase your point a bit simpler?

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 3 Jun 2026 18:27 UTC
6 points
6 ∶ 0
in reply to: Robi Rahman🔸’s comment on: My disagreements with CEA’s approach to stewarding EA
I disagree that it is full of this stuff. It does exist, though I don’t find the stuff to get surfaced much.

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 3 Jun 2026 17:53 UTC
7 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: Philanthropy Needs Ambitious Projects Immediately
I still think this is weak. This is just typical PR. If they said “we have already put our stock in a DAF. we are committed to getting this money to solve XYZ problems”, I would still be skeptical. The base rate is just so low for giving away money and most billionaires actually do talk about their intentions with the money much more than these people. https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-benevolent-artificial-intelligence/

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 3 Jun 2026 2:12 UTC
97 points
14 ∶ 2
on: Philanthropy Needs Ambitious Projects Immediately
I’ve written before that I am skeptical that the amount of funding being hypothesized is going to materialize in the quantities people seem to be suggesting/speculating. If I were to summarize that argument, Anthropic founders haven’t said a word about philanthropy in >3 years or something AFAIK, and yet we are just assuming they are going to donate 80% of their wealth. Furthermore, the base rates on people saying they are going to donate large sums and then following through is very low.
More importantly, though, it is just very hard to start an organization that can handle large amounts of money effectively until you have money to start with. How are you supposed to get to work until you have money to start with? I don’t think this is a chicken-and-egg problem so much as a more blanket “first the money is in the account, then you start”.
As an example, right now, there is an urgent need to get funds to stop the Save Our Bacon Act that could preempt any future farmed animal welfare legislation in the leader of the free world, the United States (as in, we cannot do any of our current best and most cost effective ideas if this passes) and we are struggling to get enough money (we are at $10M right now and we are being outspent).

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 2 Jun 2026 5:57 UTC
29 points
4 ∶ 0
on: Donating 80% While It Still Counts
I should note that a few months ago, I also massively front-loaded my donations such that I have very little in liquid assets. Though I have never met Jeff, him and his family have been an inspiration to me for many years.

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 1 Jun 2026 23:37 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: mal_graham🔸’s comment on: A chance to speak up for mosquito eradication in the USA (by June 5)
Thanks Mal. Very informative

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 1 Jun 2026 19:44 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
on: A chance to speak up for mosquito eradication in the USA (by June 5)
I’d be curious on any information with respect to the welfare of mosquitoes or other insects or other species that would be involved in this project.

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 30 May 2026 19:44 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: PabloAMC 🔸’s comment on: Why I struggle to donate to animal welfare charities
I think that’s fair. I appreciate that you engage with this problem that I think most people ignore.

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 29 May 2026 17:34 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: PabloAMC 🔸’s comment on: Why I struggle to donate to animal welfare charities
In these campaigns the meat producing companies could engage in similar advertising that would lead to a negative sum game.
I don’t think they could and I don’t think that is what is happening. I don’t think any meat producing companies could… engage in some kind of similar advertising.

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 29 May 2026 15:43 UTC
6 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: SiobhanBall’s comment on: Why I struggle to donate to animal welfare charities
It’s always possible to describe things in a very unflattering way, where you talk about some inputs as opposed to your goal or just describe it in a pessimistic light (eg, cheap/stingy vs. frugal). The OP describes “protests, or boycotts, or negotiations” as not something he wants to fund, but I think if you talked about funding pyrethroid production, that would also not be something he wants to fund, though that’s another way of describing insecticide-treated bednets. You could also go even worse and talk about “mass genocide of insects” or something.
To put it another way, I think global health people (who I have deep respect for) would be pretty upset and rightly call out someone writing a post where someone said they didn’t donate to global health charities since they don’t want to fund the chemical manufacturing industry, which is what we are actually purchasing.

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 28 May 2026 22:41 UTC
10 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Why I struggle to donate to animal welfare charities
But really, what we are funding is more protests, or boycotts, or negotiations with the companies or government agencies involved in factory farming.
Can you perhaps explain how this is different from say, AMF where what we are actually funding is pyrethroid production, manufacturing plants that create polyethylene nets people to hand out the nets?

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 20 May 2026 18:57 UTC
9 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Announcing the Rethink Priorities Cross-Cause Fund
I’ve known about this for a while. I really liked this write-up. I continue to be extremely impressed with Rethink Priorities.

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 19 May 2026 19:07 UTC
8 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Michael Townsend🔸’s comment on: Reflections on Anthropic and EA
Yes, to be clear, I think you should treat profligacy as a cost. It can be worth paying costs, but it’s best to know you are paying it and can decide if it’s worth it.
For instance, if you’re deciding whether to fund a large and potentially very impactful grant opportunity that involves high salaries, where the details of the grant are sensitive, it feels unclear to me how much impact there has to be on the table to justify the high salaries and discretion the grant involves.
Then it better be a damn good grant, and your standards have to be a lot higher. I understand this answer will feel like a cop out since you are asking me to hopefully give you some kind of formula, which I can’t give.
The best piece of advice I can give on avoiding the corruption of one’s own thinking when you have power and influence is to talk with someone smart, whom you trust from earlier (before it was there) and them having no incentive to agree with you. From there, basically, they are there for grounding and as a sanity check and you explain the situation to them and its their job to call you out on it vs. you just hoping to yourself notice things.
One of my next posts is going to be about how I feel a lot of behaviours within the EA community have been externalizing costs (when people want their donors to be secret, not wanting a public association with EA, etc.)

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 19 May 2026 0:38 UTC
34 points
5 ∶ 1
in reply to: cb’s comment on: AI safety is extremely bottlenecked on grantmakers
Since somebody nudged me to reply to this. I didn’t find this reply very convincing.
First, I agree that work pulling people into AI safety is/will be more time-consuming. Other than that, though,
I think that the ratio of grantmakers:people in AIS isn’t that informative for answering the question, “is the number of grantmakers a bottleneck”
This seems off to me. Surely you’d agree that if the ratio were 1:1 or something, we would say “ok, some people who are currently grantmaking need to be doing direct work”. Not everyone can just be funding things.
The better ratio is presumably something like, “people who could be working in AI safety/governance if they got funding: grantmakers”
I mean, maybe that’s another one to consider, but it still feels less relevant. A lot of people think that the denominator in this case is infinite/(nearly) all humans.
We currently feel more constrained by evaluating or creating new funding opportunities than directing $ to them
I actually don’t think this necessarily implies that we should get a lot more people into grantmaking. This could just mean that there is a lot of money available and that grantmakers should move into roles on the ground (direct work)

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 18 May 2026 22:23 UTC
19 points
3 ∶ 1
in reply to: Michael Townsend🔸’s comment on: Reflections on Anthropic and EA
Hi Michael, I liked this comment a lot, strongly upvoted.
If I were to give a few suggestions off the top of my head:
1. It often feels like AIS’s answer to get what they want, especially faster, is to simply throw more money at the problem. Salary raises, perks, nicer spaces, fancier events, etc. I think money is perhaps one knob to turn, but I’d like to see other knobs turned as well: creativity, working a lot longer/harder (sacrifices of free time), etc. Importantly, I don’t want these to be inane (spend 1 week per year in Malawi living like the poorest people on Earth). If people had the sense that AIS people got paid well but were really burning the midnight candle, I think the common man (or parts of EA which aren’t as flush with cash) would have less disdain for them.
2. Abraham kind of mentions this, but maybe any kind of costly signal (or rather, hard-to-fake signal).
3. Don’t spend money just because you can. It often feels like money in AIS is spent sort of recklessly, because it’s in excess rather than “yeah, there’s an actual need for this thing”, and thus it doesn’t really matter.
4. Don’t make “money moved” the metric for AI safety. It often seems to be. And it’s probably convenient. But it’s pretty easy to move money. It’s harder to move money well.
5. Just a lot more public writing of thought processes. It seems that more and more AIS is done in private Google Docs and Slack channels, and just occasionally, clearly public-facing posts are made, and it’s very clear that “this is what the masses get to know, the professionals will manage the real stuff”. The original name of Coefficient Giving was “Open Philanthropy”. Supposedly, it was changed to not be conflated with OpenAI, but a more cynical view (which I don’t believe) would be that it was done to be more accurate in the shift that had taken place and will continue to take place. There’s a similar case with Edward Snowden where he made the point that by default, everything in the government is classified even though it ought not be. It often feels like CG sees itself as the “steward of AIS,” where everyone else should do the thing they are told.
Perhaps another thing I’d like to see is just frankly less pompousness around “I am one of the most important/effective people in the world, doing great things for the world, having lots of impact”. I get the sense that many think it’s true, but it’s a bit hard to prove and comes across a little thick when it’s paired with what looks on the outside to be a rather comfortable-looking job with great perks/events.
This piece by Lincoln Quirk really comes to mind

Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 17 May 2026 3:24 UTC
9 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Hans Schönberg 🔸’s comment on: Salary Sacrifices Are Donations. Let’s Treat Them as Such.
Hi Hans, I appreciate this a lot. I just feel i should say, I am by no means poor. I dont spend much money but I have some investments (private and public) that have done really well and job offers that make me confident ill be fine no matter what. My worst case scenario is I do some boring market making or investment banking.