I think avoiding existential risk is the most important thing. As long as we can do that and don't have some kind of lock in, then we'll have time to think about and optimize the value of the future.

£110k seems like it would probably be impactful, and that's just one person giving right? That's probably at least one FTE. Also SERI MATS only costs about ~£500k per year so it could be expanded substantially with that amount.

Thank you for your comment.

• Regarding evals, I was referring specifically to evals focused on AI safety and risk-related behaviors like dangerous capabilities, deception, or situational awareness (I will edit the post). I think it's important to measure and quantify these capabilities to determine when risk mitigation strategies are necessary. Otherwise we risk deploying models with hidden risks and insufficient safeguards.
• Exaggerating the risks of current AI models would be misleading so we should avoid that. The point I intended to communicate was that we should try to accurately inform everyone  about both the risks and benefits of AI and the opinions of different experts. Given the potential future importance of AI, I believe the quantity and quality of discussion on the topic is too low and this problem is often worsened by the media which tends to focus on short-term events rather than what's important in the long term.

More generally, while we should aim to avoid causing harm, avoiding all actions that have a non-zero risk of causing harm would lead to inaction.

If overly cautious individuals refrain from taking action, decision making and progress may then be driven by those who are less concerned about risks, potentially leading to worse overall situation.

Therefore, a balanced approach that considers the risks and benefits of each action without stifling all action is needed to make meaningful progress.

Now the post is updated with 2024 numbers :)

I didn't include Longview Philanthropy because they're a smaller funder and a lot of their funding seems to come from Open Philanthropy. There is a column called "Other" that serves as a catch-all for any funders I left out.

I took a look at Founder's Pledge but their donations don't seem that relevant to AI safety to me.

Do you think wild animals such as tuna and deer are a good option too since they probably have a relatively high standard of living compared to farmed animals?

LTFF, LessWrong.

I've never heard this idea proposed before so it seems novel and interesting.

As you say in the post, the AI risk movement could gain much more awareness by associating itself with the climate risk advocacy movement which is much larger. Compute is arguably the main driver of AI progress, compute is correlated with energy usage, and energy use generally increases carbon emissions so limiting carbon emissions from AI is an indirect way of limiting the compute dedicated to AI and slowing down the AI capabilities race.

This approach seems viable in the near future until innovations in energy technology (e.g. nuclear fusion) weaken the link between energy production and CO2 emissions, or algorithmic progress reduces the need for massive amounts of compute for AI.

The question is whether this indirect approach would be more effective than or at least complementary to a more direct approach that advocates explicit compute limits and communicates risks from misaligned AI.

A recent survey of AI alignment researchers found that the most common opinion on the statement "Current alignment research is on track to solve alignment before we get to AGI" was "Somewhat disagree". The same survey found that most AI alignment researchers also support pausing or slowing down AI progress.

Slowing down AI progress might be net-positive if you take ideas like longtermism seriously but it seems challenging to do given the strong economic incentives to increase AI capabilities. Maybe government policies to limit AI progress will eventually enter the Overton window when AI reaches a certain level of dangerous capability.

This is a cool project! Thanks for making it. Hopefully it makes the book more accessible.

Update: the UK government has announced £8.5 million in AI safety funding for systematic AI safety and these grants will probably be distributed in 2025.