Redwood Research donations received

This is an online portal with information on donations that were announced publicly (or have been shared with permission) that were of interest to Vipul Naik. The git repository with the code for this portal, as well as all the underlying data, is available on GitHub. All payment amounts are in current United States dollars (USD). The repository of donations is being seeded with an initial collation by Issa Rice as well as continued contributions from him (see his commits and the contract work page listing all financially compensated contributions to the site) but all responsibility for errors and inaccuracies belongs to Vipul Naik. Current data is preliminary and has not been completely vetted and normalized; if sharing a link to this site or any page on this site, please include the caveat that the data is preliminary (if you want to share without including caveats, please check with Vipul Naik). We expect to have completed the first round of development by the end of July 2024. See the about page for more details. Also of interest: pageview data on analytics.vipulnaik.com, tutorial in README, request for feedback to EA Forum.

Table of contents

Basic donee information

We do not have any donee information for the donee Redwood Research in our system.

Donee donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 4 5,300,000 6,673,500 1,274,000 1,274,000 1,274,000 5,300,000 5,300,000 5,300,000 9,420,000 9,420,000 10,700,000 10,700,000 10,700,000
AI safety 4 5,300,000 6,673,500 1,274,000 1,274,000 1,274,000 5,300,000 5,300,000 5,300,000 9,420,000 9,420,000 10,700,000 10,700,000 10,700,000

Donation amounts by donor and year for donee Redwood Research

Donor Total 2023 2022 2021
Open Philanthropy (filter this donee) 25,420,000.00 5,300,000.00 10,700,000.00 9,420,000.00
Jaan Tallinn (filter this donee) 1,274,000.00 0.00 1,274,000.00 0.00
Total 26,694,000.00 5,300,000.00 11,974,000.00 9,420,000.00

Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (2 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
(My understanding of) What Everyone in Technical Alignment is Doing and Why (GW, IR)2022-08-28Thomas Larsen Eli LessWrongFund for Alignment Resesarch Aligned AI Alignment Research Center Anthropic Center for AI Safety Center for Human-Compatible AI Center on Long-Term Risk Conjecture DeepMind Encultured Future of Humanity Institute Machine Intelligence Research Institute OpenAI Ought Redwood Research Review of current state of cause areaAI safetyThis post, cross-posted between LessWrong and the Alignment Forum, goes into detail on the authors' understanding of various research agendas and the organizations pursuing them.
2021 AI Alignment Literature Review and Charity Comparison (GW, IR)2021-12-23Larks Effective Altruism ForumLarks Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund Survival and Flourishing Fund FTX Future Fund Future of Humanity Institute Future of Humanity Institute Centre for the Governance of AI Center for Human-Compatible AI Machine Intelligence Research Institute Global Catastrophic Risk Institute Centre for the Study of Existential Risk OpenAI Google Deepmind Anthropic Alignment Research Center Redwood Research Ought AI Impacts Global Priorities Institute Center on Long-Term Risk Centre for Long-Term Resilience Rethink Priorities Convergence Analysis Stanford Existential Risk Initiative Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative 80,000 Hours Survival and Flourishing Fund Review of current state of cause areaAI safetyCross-posted to LessWrong at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/C4tR3BEpuWviT7Sje/2021-ai-alignment-literature-review-and-charity-comparison (GW, IR) This is the sixth post in a tradition of annual blog posts on the state of AI safety and the work of various organizations in the space over the course of the year; the post is structured similarly to the previous year's post https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/K7Z87me338BQT3Mcv/2020-ai-alignment-literature-review-and-charity-comparison (GW, IR) but has a few new features. The author mentions that he has several conflicts of interest that he cannot individually disclose. He also starts collecting "second preferences" data this year for all the organizations he talks to, which is where the organization would like to see funds go, other than itself. The Long-Term Future Fund is the clear winner here. He also announces that he's looking for a research assistant to help with next year's post given the increasing time demands and his reduced time availability. His final rot13'ed donation decision is to donate to the Long-Term Future Fund so that sufficiently skilled AI safety researchers can make a career with LTFF funding; his second preference for donations is BERI. Many other organizations that he considers to be likely to be doing excellent work are either already well-funded or do not provide sufficient disclosure.

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (4 donations)

Graph of top 10 donors (for donations with known year of donation) by amount, showing the timeframe of donations

Graph of donations and their timeframes
DonorAmount (current USD)Amount rank (out of 4)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Open Philanthropy5,300,000.0032023-06AI safety/technical researchhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2023/-- Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Grant "for general support. Redwood Research is a nonprofit research institution focused on aligning advanced AI with human interests."
Open Philanthropy10,700,000.0012022-08AI safety/technical researchhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2/-- Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Grant "for general support. Redwood Research is a nonprofit research institution focused on aligning advanced AI with human interests."

Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2023/ suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee.

Other notes: Intended funding timeframe in months: 18.
Jaan Tallinn1,274,000.0042022-06-16AI safety/technical researchhttps://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2022-h1-recommendationsSurvival and Flourishing Fund Nell Watson Malo Bourgon Catherine Olsson Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2022 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2022-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal value functions. Recommenders specified a marginal value function for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different value functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts."

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's seventh grant round and the first with a grant to this grantee.

Donor retrospective of the donation: The future round https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2023-h1-recommendations includes a grant recommendation to Redwood Research for $1,098,000, suggesting satisfaction with the grant outcome.
Open Philanthropy9,420,000.0022021-11AI safety/technical researchhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support/Nick Beckstead Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Grant "for general support. Redwood Research is a new research institution that conducts research to better understand and make progress on AI alignment in order to improve the long-run future."

Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2/ of a comparable amount ($10.7 million) suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee.

Other notes: This is a total across four grants.