MichaelDickens

Karma: 7,168

I do independent research on EA topics. I write about whatever seems important, tractable, and interesting (to me).

I have a website: https://mdickens.me/ Much of the content on my website gets cross-posted to the EA Forum, but I also write about some non-EA stuff over there.

My favorite things that I’ve written: https://mdickens.me/favorite-posts/

I used to work as a software developer at Affirm.

MichaelDickens 30 Jan 2026 2:26 UTC
10 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Unfalsifiable stories of doom
A donor wanted to spend their money this way; it would not be fair to the donor for Eliezer to turn around and give the money to someone else. There is a particular theory of change according to which this is the best marginal use of ~$1 million: it gives Eliezer a strong defense against accusations like

If they suddenly said that the risk of human extinction from AGI or superintelligence is extremely low, in all likelihood that money would dry up and Yudkowsky and Soares would be out of a job.

I kinda don’t think this was the best use of a million dollars, but I can see the argument for how it might be.

MichaelDickens 29 Jan 2026 16:17 UTC
15 points
3 ∶ 1
in reply to: Dave Banerjee 🔸’s comment on: Unfalsifiable stories of doom
Copying from my other comment:

The reason Eliezer gets paid so much is because a donor specifically requested it. The express purpose of the donation was to make Eliezer rich enough that he could afford to say “actually AI risk isn’t a big deal” and shut down MIRI without putting himself in a difficult financial situation.

(I don’t know about Nate’s salary but $235K looks pretty reasonable to me? That’s less than a mid-level software engineer makes.)

Edit Feb 2: Apparently the donation I was thinking of is separate from Eliezer’s salary, see his comment

MichaelDickens 29 Jan 2026 16:14 UTC
12 points
3 ∶ 2
in reply to: Yarrow Bouchard 🔸’s comment on: Unfalsifiable stories of doom

MIRI pays Eliezer Yudkowsky $600,000 a year.

I believe this is because a donor specifically requested it. The express purpose of the donation was to make Eliezer rich enough that he could afford to say “actually AI risk isn’t a big deal” and shut down MIRI without putting himself in a difficult financial situation.

Edit Feb 2: Apparently the donation I was thinking of is separate from Eliezer’s salary, see his comment

MichaelDickens 27 Jan 2026 3:37 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: If AI alignment is only as hard as building the steam engine, then we likely still die
I spent a few days thinking about this but I struggled to come up with a bet structure that I was confident was good for both of us. The financial implications of this sort of bet are complicated. I didn’t want to spend more time on it so I’ll punt on this for now but I will keep it in the back of my mind in case I come up with anything.

MichaelDickens 20 Jan 2026 19:14 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
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MichaelDickens 19 Jan 2026 22:04 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: SummaryBot’s comment on: Return Stacked Funds: A New Way to Get Leverage
This summary is accurate.

MichaelDickens 18 Jan 2026 21:28 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: PeterMcCluskey’s comment on: Return Stacked Funds: A New Way to Get Leverage
Do you have an opinion about what maturity is best to short?

(My first thought is that if you have a view about what interest rates will do over the next 5–10 years, then you should short 5–10 year bonds. But I’m not sure that’s right.)

Return Stacking Funds: A New Way to Get Leverage

MichaelDickens18 Jan 2026 18:21 UTC

45 points

9 comments7 min readEA link

MichaelDickens 14 Jan 2026 20:59 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: If AI alignment is only as hard as building the steam engine, then we likely still die

Are you assuming the deployment of ASI will be analogous to an omnipotent civilisation with values completely disconnected from humans suddenly showing up on Earth?

Something like that, yeah.

However, that would be very much at odds with historical gradual technological development shaped by human values.

ASI would have a level of autonomy and goal-directedness that’s unlike any previous technology. The case for caring about AI risk doesn’t work if you take too much of an outside view, you have to reason about what properties ASI would have.

MichaelDickens 14 Jan 2026 13:49 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: yujing’s comment on: yujing’s Quick takes

Donating at the end of the year.

I used to donate mid-year for the reasons you gave. The last couple years I donated at the end of the year because the EA Forum was running a donation election in early December, and I wanted to publish my “where I’m donating” post shortly before the donation election, and I don’t want to donate until after I’ve published the post. But perhaps syncing with the donation election is less important and I should publish and donate mid-year instead?

If AI alignment is only as hard as building the steam engine, then we likely still die

MichaelDickens10 Jan 2026 23:10 UTC

35 points

8 comments4 min readEA link

MichaelDickens 8 Jan 2026 4:31 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: American effective altruists should consider political donations
A concern with donating to political candidates is that every candidate who puts major focus on AI safety is a Democrat; funding their campaigns risks dialing up polarization of AI safety. I’m pretty uncertain about how big a deal this is.

MichaelDickens 8 Jan 2026 4:28 UTC
21 points
8 ∶ 0
on: Public intellectuals need to say what they actually believe
Eliezer comes to mind as a positive example:
- He’s pretty explicit about explaining why he believes what he believes.
- He gives the true reason for his beliefs, not the reason he expects to be most persuasive, even if the true reason is “weird”.

MichaelDickens 25 Dec 2025 19:54 UTC
22 points
8 ∶ 0
on: “Influence from within” on AI doesn’t work, so bye bye

I’ve been a fool trying to influence people who are on the AI industry’s money and glory payroll. I’m going to take my own advice now, write you off, and focus on the moral majority who wants to protect the world.

I’ve donated $30,000 to PauseAI. Some of your past posts played a role in that, such as The Case for AI Safety Advocacy to the Public and Pausing AI is the only safe approach to digital sentience. I don’t think writing off people like me is a good idea.

You should all be ashamed of your complicity in bringing about potentially world-ending technology.

I am literally donating to PauseAI. I don’t think you are being fair. I fully agree that some EAs are directly increasing x-risk by working on AI development, and they should stop doing that. I don’t think it’s fair to paint all of us with that brush.

MichaelDickens 21 Dec 2025 1:18 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 2
in reply to: Jackson Wagner’s comment on: Wartime ethics is weird
Wouldn’t this sort of reasoning also say that FTX was justified in committing fraud if they could donate users’ money to global health charities? They metaphorically conscripted their users to fight against a great problem. People in the developed world failed to coordinate to fund tractable global health interventions, and FTX attempted to fix this coordination problem by defrauding them.

(I don’t think that’s an accurate description of what FTX did, but it doesn’t matter for the purposes of this analogy.)

MichaelDickens 20 Dec 2025 21:18 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: huw’s comment on: Wartime ethics is weird
I agree. The resolution is that ordinarily-unethical behavior done during wartime is still unethical. (At least in the majority of cases, I don’t want to claim there are never exceptions.)

Wartime ethics is weird

MichaelDickens20 Dec 2025 16:21 UTC

14 points

11 comments2 min readEA link

MichaelDickens 12 Dec 2025 14:44 UTC
20 points
8 ∶ 0
on: New 80k problem profile: extreme power concentration
Agreed that extreme power concentration is an important problem, and this is a solid writeup.

Regarding ways to reduce risk: My favorite solution (really a stopgap) to extreme power concentration is to ban ASI [until we know how to ensure it’s safe], a solution that is notably absent from the article’s list. I wrote more about my views here and about how I wish people would stop ignoring this option. It’s bad that the 80K article did not consider what is IMO the best idea.
What links here?
- MichaelDickens's comment on New 80k problem profile: extreme power concentration by rosehadshar (LessWrong; 12 Dec 2025 14:45 UTC; 25 points)

MichaelDickens 10 Dec 2025 22:00 UTC
9 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: Nick Kautz’s comment on: Front-Load Giving Because of Anthropic Donors?
Didn’t Sam tell several straightforward lies? e.g. claiming that they had enough assets to fully cover the account values of all users, which they didn’t; claiming that Alameda never borrowed users’ deposits, which it did.

MichaelDickens 4 Dec 2025 18:07 UTC
19 points
2 ∶ 1
on: Front-Load Giving Because of Anthropic Donors?
Good note. Also worth keeping in mind the base rate of companies going under. FTX committing massive fraud was weird; but a young, fast-growing, unprofitable company blowing up was decidedly predictable, and IMO the EA community was banking too hard on FTX money being real.

Plus the planning fallacy, i.e., if someone says they want to do something by some date, then it’ll probably happen later than that.

My off-the-cuff guess is
- 30% chance Anthropic IPOs by end of 2028
- 20% chance Anthropic IPOs in 2029 or later
- 50% chance Anthropic never IPOs—because they go under for normal business-y reasons, or they build AGI first, or we’re all dead, or whatever

MichaelDickens

Error

Re­turn Stack­ing Funds: A New Way to Get Leverage

If AI al­ign­ment is only as hard as build­ing the steam en­g­ine, then we likely still die

War­time ethics is weird

Return Stacking Funds: A New Way to Get Leverage

If AI alignment is only as hard as building the steam engine, then we likely still die

Wartime ethics is weird