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.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Facebook username | Berkeley-Existential-Risk-Initiative-1875638366085846 |
| Website | http://existence.org/ |
| Data entry method on Donations List Website | Manual (no scripts used) |
| Org Watch page | https://orgwatch.issarice.com/?organization=Berkeley+Existential+Risk+Initiative |
Full donor page for donor Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative
Full donee page for donee Machine Intelligence Research Institute
| Item | Value |
|---|
| Cause area | Count | Median | Mean | Minimum | 10th percentile | 20th percentile | 30th percentile | 40th percentile | 50th percentile | 60th percentile | 70th percentile | 80th percentile | 90th percentile | Maximum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 4 | 100,000 | 275,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 300,000 | 300,000 | 600,000 | 600,000 | 600,000 |
| AI safety | 4 | 100,000 | 275,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 300,000 | 300,000 | 600,000 | 600,000 | 600,000 |
If you hover over a cell for a given cause area and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.
Note: Cause area classification used here may not match that used by donor for all cases.
| Cause area | Number of donations | Total | 2020 | 2019 | 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI safety (filter this donor) | 4 | 1,100,000.00 | 300,000.00 | 600,000.00 | 200,000.00 |
| Total | 4 | 1,100,000.00 | 300,000.00 | 600,000.00 | 200,000.00 |
Graph of spending by cause area and year (incremental, not cumulative)
Graph of spending by cause area and year (cumulative)
| Title (URL linked) | Publication date | Author | Publisher | Affected donors | Affected donees | Affected influencers | Document scope | Cause area | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New grants from the Open Philanthropy Project and BERI | 2019-04-01 | Rob Bensinger | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | Open Philanthropy Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | Donee periodic update | AI safety | MIRI announces two grants to it: a two-year grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/potential-risks-advanced-artificial-intelligence/machine-intelligence-research-institute-general-support-2019 totaling $2,112,500 from the Open Philanthropy Project, with half of it disbursed in 2019 and the other half disbursed in 2020. The amount disbursed in 2019 (of a little over $1.06 million) is on top of the $1.25 million already committed by the Open Philanthropy Project as part of the 3-year $3.75 million grant https://intelligence.org/2017/11/08/major-grant-open-phil/ The $1.06 million in 2020 may be supplemented by further grants from the Open Philanthropy Project. The grant size from the Open Philanthropy Project was determined by the Committee for Effective Altruism Support. The post also notes that the Open Philanthropy Project plans to determine future grant sizes using the Committee. MIRI expects the grant money to play an important role in decision-making as it executes on growing its research team as described in its 2018 strategy update post https://intelligence.org/2018/11/22/2018-update-our-new-research-directions/ and fundraiser post https://intelligence.org/2018/11/26/miris-2018-fundraiser/ |
Graph of all donations (with known year of donation), showing the timeframe of donations
| Amount (current USD) | Amount rank (out of 4) | Donation date | Cause area | URL | Influencer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 300,000.00 | 2 | AI safety | http://existence.org/grants/ | -- | Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Other notes: The grant is mentioned by MIRI in the blog post https://intelligence.org/2020/04/27/miris-largest-grant-to-date/ along with a large grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/potential-risks-advanced-artificial-intelligence/machine-intelligence-research-institute-general-support-2020 from the Open Philanthropy Project. The post says: "at the time of our 2019 fundraiser, we expected to receive a grant from BERI in early 2020, and incorporated this into our reserves estimates. However, we predicted the grant size would be $600k; now that we know the final grant amount, that estimate should be $300k lower.". |
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| 600,000.00 | 1 | AI safety | http://existence.org/grants/ | -- | Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor retrospective of the donation: BERI would make a further to MIRI, indicating continued confidence in the grantee. The followup grant would be in March 2020 for $300,000. By that point, BERI would have transitioned these grantmaking responsibilities to the Survival and Fluorishing Fund. Other notes: This grant is also discussed by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (the grant recipient) at https://intelligence.org/2017/11/08/major-grant-open-phil/ along with a grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/potential-risks-advanced-artificial-intelligence/machine-intelligence-research-institute-general-support-2019 from the Open Philanthropy Project. Announced: 2019-05-09. |
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| 100,000.00 | 3 | AI safety | http://existence.org/grants/ | -- | Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor retrospective of the donation: BERI would make two further grants to MIRI, indicating continued confidence in the grantee. The last grant would be in March 2020 for $300,000. By that point, BERI would have transitioned these grantmaking responsibilities to the Survival and Fluorishing Fund. Other notes: Announced: 2018-01-11. |
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| 100,000.00 | 3 | AI safety | http://existence.org/grants | -- | Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: The announcement page says: "Broadly, we believe these groups [Machine Intelligence Research Institute and Future of Life Institute] to have done good work in the past for reducing existential risk and wish to support their continued efforts." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): This is one of two opening grants made by BERI to begin its grants program. Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: The grant page says: "Over the next few months, we may write more about our reasoning behind these and other grants." It further outlines the kinds of organizations that BERI will be granting to in the short run. Donor retrospective of the donation: BERI would make three further grants to MIRI, indicating continued confidence in the grantee. The last grant would be in March 2020 for $300,000. By that point, BERI would have transitioned these grantmaking responsibilities to the Survival and Fluorishing Fund. Other notes: Announced: 2017-09-25. |