I’m glad this happened. An additional 300k USD going to some of the world’s poorest is an amazing thing, worthy of praise and applause. Thank you for doing this. That said:
What are the economics of the whole production? Eg —how much was paid in flights, video work, editing, staff, translators, bribes, transport, expenses etc? —how much more in donations is expected to be generated from this? -- (and do these two cancel out?)
I’m keen to understand whether big YouTube productions are more effective than similar-sized silent donations. If yes, it could be a good thing to pitch to all manner of content creators.
Separately —how much, if any, revenue is expected from this? What will that revenue be used for?
Funding 2 incredible academics to do work that might make AI Safety things more legible and attractive to work on in academia sounds great. At 1.5m, probably not cost effective it there is only 1 new person counterfactually doing AIS 1 year from now, almost certainly cost effective if there are 10.