Suppose Alice thinks AGI will probably happen in the next 5 years, that this will lead to an existential catastrophe, and that spending on AIS has by far the highest value right now.
On the other hand, Bob thinks AGI is far away and donations to AI Safety aren't very impactful. Bob thinks that donating to global health charities is by far the best use of money, and that this will stay true for the next decades.
It seems Alice and Bob could benefit from a trade. Bob donates to AI Safety until, say, 2030. If no existential catastrophe has occurred by then, Alice donates to Global Health until she donated a sum of money higher than what Bob had donated to AI Safety (plus interest).
This way, both get more money into their cause area at a time it matters to them.
I am keeping this short, feel free to ask for elaborations. I know there is some literature on moral trade and betting on beliefs. Is there anything on this in particular? Is there maybe even some kind of initiative to facilitate these kinds of trades?
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Good point, but can't this trade occur just through financial markets without involving 1 on 1 trades among EAs? For example, if you have short timelines, you could take out a loan, donate it all to AI Safety.
I haven't thought about this a lot, but my impression is this doesn't work for smeared probability distributions and a medium level of risk aversion?
Let's say Alice thinks there is still a 20% chance AGI doesn't happen super fast / doesn't have transformative impact and she needs to pay back a loan in 10 years. Then if she doesn't want to take the risk of not being able to pay in these timelines, she cannot really donate all of the loan now.
On the other hand, a 20% chance that Alice has to donate a lot of money to global health doesn't look like such a big risk, at least if she doesn't have to donate everything right away.
But maybe the difference here is my implicit assumption that owing donations to Bob isn't a big of a risk as owing money to a bank, because the former might cut Alice more slack and give her more time to pay.
Maybe this trade would be quite risky for Bob unless it is enforced so strictly that the risk profile for Alice is very similar to just borrowing money from a bank.