Thanks for the comment! I might be missing something, but GPT-type chatbots are based on large language models, which play a key role in scaling toward AGI. I do think that extrapolating progress from them is valuable but also agree that tying discussions about future AI systems too closely to current models’ capabilities can be misleading.
That said, my post intentionally assumes a more limited claim: that AI will transform the world in significant ways relatively soon. This assumption seems both more likely and increasingly foreseeable. In contrast, assumptions about a world ‘incredibly radically’ transformed by superintelligence are less likely and less foreseeable. There have been lots of arguments around why you should work on AI Safety, and I agree with many of them. I’m mainly trying to reach the EAs who buy into the limited claim but currently act as if they don’t.
Regarding the example: It would likely be a mistake to focus only on current AI capabilities for education. However, it could be important to seriously evaluate scenarios like, ‘AI teachers better than every human teacher soon’.
Some simplifying assumptions:
£50k starting net worth
Only employed for the next 4 years
£300k salary, £150k after tax, £110k after personal consumption
10% interest on your savings for 4 years
Around £635k at end of 2030
This is only slightly more than the average net worth of for UK 55 to 64 year olds.
Overall, if this plan worked out near perfectly, it would place you in around the 92 percentile of wealth in the UK.
This would put you in a good, but not great position to invest to give.
Overall it seems to me as if you’re trying to speedrun getting incredibly wealthy in 4 years. This is generally not possible with salaried work (the assumption above put you around the 99-99.5 percentile of salaries), but might be more feasible through entrepreneurship.
Some other considerations:
Working in such a high paying job, even in financial services, will probably not allow you to study and practice investing. You will not be an expert on AI investing and investing in general in 2030, which would be a problem if you believe such expertise was necessary for you to invest to give.
Quite a lot of EAs will be richer than this in 2030. My rough guess is more than 500. Your position might be useful but is likely to be far from unique.
You might want to think through your uncertainties about how useful money will be to achieve your goals in 2030-2040. If there’s no more white collar jobs in 2030, in 2035 the world might be very weird and confusing.
If there is a massive increase of overall wealth in 2030-2040 due to fast technological progress, a lot of problems you might care about will get solved by non-EAs. Charity is a luxury good for the rich, more people will be rich, charity on average solves much more problems than it creates.
Technological progress itself will potentially solve a lot of the problems you care about.
(Also agree with Marcus’s point.)