All of baleparalysis's Comments + Replies
Skeptical about the cost effectiveness of several of these.
Ought - 50k. "Part of the aim of the grant is to show Ought as an example of the type of organization we are likely to fund in the future." Is that really your aim now, being a grant dispenser for random AI companies? What happened to saving lives?
"Our understanding is that hiring is currently more of a bottleneck for them than funding, so we are only making a small grant." If they have enough money and this is a token grant, why is it 50k? Why not reduce to 15-20k and spend the...
"Metaculus - 70k, Ozzie Gooen - 70k, Jacob Lagerros - 27k. These are small companies that need funding; why are you acting as grant-givers here rather than as special interest investors?"
I'm not sure why you think all of these are companies. Metaculus is a company, but the other two aren't.
Personally, I think it would be pretty neat if this group (or a similar one) were to later set up the legal infrastructure to properly invest in groups where that would make sense. But this would take quite a bit of time (both fixed costs and marginal costs), and
...Robert Miles, video content on AI alignment - 39k. Isn't this something you guys and/or MIRI should be doing, and could do quickly, for a lot less money, without having to trust that someone else will do it well enough?
Creating good video scripts is a rare skill. So is being able to explain things on a video in a way many viewers find compelling. And a large audience of active viewers is a rare resource (one Miles already has through his previous work).
I share some of your questions and concerns about other grants here, but in this case, I think it ...
The large gift you received should be used to expand the influence of EA as an entity, not as a one-off [...] and of course in general I support de-emphasizing AI risk in favor of actual charity.
While I'm not involved in EA Funds donation processing or grantmaking decisions, I'd guess that anyone making a large gift to the Far Future Fund does, in fact, support emphasizing AI risk, and considers funding this branch of scientific research to be "actual charity".
It could make sense for people with certain worldviews to recommend that peop...
This comment strikes me as quite uncharitable, but asks really good questions that I do think would be good to see more detail on.
It would be really useful if this was split up into separate comments that could be upvoted/downvoted separately.
If the donation was specifically earmarked for AI risk, that aside isn't relevant, but most of the comment still applies. Otherwise, AI risk is certainly not the only long term problem.