Helen Toner money moved

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

This entity is also a donor.

Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (1 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
Our Grantmaking So Far: Approach and Process2016-02-09Helen Toner Open PhilanthropyOpen Philanthropy Broad donor strategyThe post provides a detailed description of Open Philanthropy's grantmaking process, both in terms of the overall approach and the decision process for individual grants. A March 2017 update adds a 50/40/10 rule. A section on differences with other foundations highlights three differences: (1) more time and thought in focus area selection and program officer selection, (2) closer collaboration between grant investigators and primary decision-makers, (3) greater prioritization of information-sharing including with the general public where feasible, and (4) taking on more of the write-up work associated with a grant, so that grantees can focus on their work and less on tailoring grant applications. The next major update from Open Philanthropy on their general grantmaking process would be https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/questions-we-ask-ourselves-making-grant by Michael Levine (2019-08-06).

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (41 donations)

DonorDoneeAmount (current USD)Donation dateCause areaURLNotes
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundAI Impacts75,000.002020-09-03AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/september-2020-long-term-future-fund-grants#center-for-human-compatible-ai-75000 Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2021 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient.

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Grant for "answering decision-relevant questions about the future of artificial intelligence."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Adam Gleave writes: "Their work has and continues to influence my outlook on how and when advanced AI will develop, and I often see researchers I collaborate with cite their work in conversations. [...] Overall, I would be excited to see more research into better understanding how AI will develop in the future. This research can help funders to decide which projects to support (and when), and researchers to select an impactful research agenda. We are pleased to support AI Impacts' work in this space, and hope this research field will continue to grow.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Grant investigator and main influencer Adam Gleave writes: "We awarded a grant of $75,000, approximately one fifth of the AI Impacts budget. We do not expect sharply diminishing returns, so it is likely that at the margin, additional funding to AI Impacts would continue to be valuable. When funding established organizations, we often try to contribute a "fair share" of organizations' budgets based on the Fund's overall share of the funding landscape. This aids coordination with other donors and encourages organizations to obtain funding from diverse sources (which reduces the risk of financial issues if one source becomes unavailable)."
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 19.02%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round
Intended funding timeframe in months: 12

Other notes: The grant page says: "(Recusal note: Due to working as a contractor for AI Impacts, Asya Bergal recused herself from the discussion and voting surrounding this grant.)" The EA Forum post https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dgy6m8TGhv4FCn4rx/long-term-future-fund-september-2020-grants (GW, IR) about this grant round attracts comments, but none specific to the CHAI grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundCenter for Human-Compatible AI75,000.002020-09-03AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/september-2020-long-term-future-fund-grants#center-for-human-compatible-ai-75000 Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the September 2020 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to support "hiring a research engineer to support CHAI’s technical research projects."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka gives these reasons for the grant: "Over the last few years, CHAI has hosted a number of people who I think have contributed at a very high quality level to the AI alignment problem, most prominently Rohin Shah [...] I've also found engaging with Andrew Critch's thinking on AI alignment quite valuable, and I am hopeful about more work from Stuart Russell [...] the specific project that CHAI is requesting money for seems also quite reasonable to me. [...] it seems quite important for them to be able to run engineering-heavy machine learning projects, for which it makes sense to hire research engineers to assist with the associated programming tasks. The reports we've received from students at CHAI also suggest that past engineer hiring has been valuable and has enabled students at CHAI to do substantially better work."

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka writes: "Having thought more recently about CHAI as an organization and its place in the ecosystem of AI alignment,I am currently uncertain about its long-term impact and where it is going, and I eventually plan to spend more time thinking about the future of CHAI. So I think it's not that unlikely (~20%) that I might change my mind on the level of positive impact I'd expect from future grants like this. However, I think this holds less for the other Fund members who were also in favor of this grant, so I don't think my uncertainty is much evidence about how LTFF will think about future grants to CHAI."

Donor retrospective of the donation: A later grant round https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/may-2021-long-term-future-fund-grants includes a $48,000 grant from the LTFF to CHAI for a similar purpose, suggesting continued satisfaction and a continued positive assessment of the grantee.

Other notes: Adam Gleave, though on the grantmaking team, recused himself from discussions around this grant since he is a Ph.D. student at CHAI. Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka includes a few concerns: "Rohin is leaving CHAI soon, and I'm unsure about CHAI's future impact, since Rohin made up a large fraction of the impact of CHAI in my mind. [...] I also maintain a relatively high level of skepticism about research that tries to embed itself too closely within the existing ML research paradigm. [...] A concrete example of the problems I have seen (chosen for its simplicity more than its importance) is that, on several occasions, I've spoken to authors who, during the publication and peer-review process, wound up having to remove some of their papers' most important contributions to AI alignment. [...] Another concern: Most of the impact that Rohin contributed seemed to be driven more by distillation and field-building work than by novel research. [...] I believe distillation and field-building to be particularly neglected and valuable at the margin. I don't currently see the rest of CHAI engaging in that work in the same way." The EA Forum post https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dgy6m8TGhv4FCn4rx/long-term-future-fund-september-2020-grants (GW, IR) about this grant round attracts comments, but none specific to the CHAI grant. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 19.02%.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund80,000 Hours100,000.002020-04-14Effective altruism/movement growth/career counselinghttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2020-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Other notes: Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 20.48%.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundMachine Intelligence Research Institute100,000.002020-04-14AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2020-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Other notes: In the blog post https://intelligence.org/2020/04/27/miris-largest-grant-to-date/ MIRI mentions the grant along with a $7.7 million grant from the Open Philanthropy Project and a $300,000 grant from Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 20.48%.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundAI Safety Camp29,000.002019-11-21AI safety/technical research/talent pipelinehttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/november-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants Donation process: Grant selected from a pool of applicants. More details on the grantmaking process were not included in this round.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to fund the fifth AI Safety Camp. This camp is to be held in Toronto, Canada.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "This round, I reached out to more past participants and received responses that were, overall, quite positive. I’ve also started thinking that the reference class of things like the AI Safety Camp is more important than I had originally thought."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Amount likely determined based on what was requested in application. It is comparable to previous grant amounts of $25,000 and $41,000, that were also to run an AI Safety Camp.
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 6.22%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round and of when the grantee intends to hold the next AI Safety Camp.
Intended funding timeframe in months: 1

Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup $85,000 grant (2021-04-01), also investigated by Oliver Habryka, would be accompanied by a more positive assessment based on processing more feedback from camp participants.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundRoam Research10,000.002019-08-30Epistemic institutionshttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/august-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Grantee applied through the online application process, and was selected based on review by the fund managers. Alex Zhu was the fund manager most excited about the grant, and responsible for the public write-up

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to support the continued development of Roam, a web application from Conor White-Sullivan filling a similar niche as Workflowy. Roam automates the Zettelkasten method, "a note-taking / document-drafting process based on physical index cards." The grant write-up says: "This funding will support Roam’s general operating costs, including expenses for Conor, one employee, and several contractors."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Fund manager Alex Zhu writes: "On my inside view, if Roam succeeds, an experienced user of the note-taking app Workflowy will get at least as much value switching to Roam as they got from using Workflowy in the first place. (Many EAs, myself included, see Workflowy as an integral part of our intellectual process, and I think Roam might become even more integral than Workflowy" and links to Sarah Constantin's posts on Roam: https://www.facebook.com/sarah.constantin.543/posts/242611079943317 and https://srconstantin.posthaven.com/how-to-make-a-memex

Other notes: Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.28%.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundStag Lynn23,000.002019-08-30AI safety/upskillinghttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/august-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Grantee applied through the online application process, and was selected based on review by the fund managers. Alex Zhu was the fund manager most excited about the grant, and responsible for the public write-up. Alex Zhu's write-up disclosed a potential conflict of interest because Stag was living with him and helping him with odd jobs. So, comments from Oliver Habryka, another fund manager, are also included

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project

Intended use of funds: Grantee's "current intention is to spend the next year improving his skills in a variety of areas (e.g. programming, theoretical neuroscience, and game theory) with the goal of contributing to AI safety research, meeting relevant people in the x-risk community, and helping out in EA/rationality related contexts wherever he can (eg, at rationality summer camps like SPARC and ESPR)." Two projects he may pursue include (1) working to implement certificates of impact in the EA/X-risk community, (2) working as an unpaid personal assistant to someone in EA who is sufficiently busy for this form of assistance to be useful, and sufficiently productive for the assistance to be valuable

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Alex Zhu, the fund manager most excited about the grant, writes: "I recommended funding Stag because I think he is smart, productive, and altruistic, has a track record of doing useful work, and will contribute more usefully to reducing existential risk by directly developing his capabilities and embedding himself in the EA community than he would by finishing his undergraduate degree or working a full-time job." Oliver Habryka, another fund manager, writes: "I’ve interacted with Stag in the past and have broadly positive impressions of him, in particular his capacity for independent strategic thinking." He cites Stag's success in Latvian and Galois Mathematics Olympiads, and Stag's contributions to improving ESPR and SPARC, as well as Stag's decision to contribute to those projects, taking this as "another signal of Stag’s talent at selecting and/or improving projects."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): No amount-specific reason given, but the amount is likely selected to cover a reasonable fraction of living costs for a year
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.24%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round
Intended funding timeframe in months: 12
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundAI Safety Camp41,000.002019-08-30AI safety/technical research/talent pipelinehttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/august-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Grantee applied through the online application process, and was selected based on review by the fund managers. Oliver Habryka was the fund manager most excited about the grant, and responsible for the public write-up.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to fund the 4th AI Safety Camp (AISC) - a research retreat and program for prospective AI safety researchers. From the grant application: "Compared to past iterations, we plan to change the format to include a 3 to 4-day project generation period and team formation workshop, followed by a several-week period of online team collaboration on concrete research questions, a 6 to 7-day intensive research retreat, and ongoing mentoring after the camp. The target capacity is 25 - 30 participants, with projects that range from technical AI safety (majority) to policy and strategy research." The project would later spin off as the AI Safety Research Program https://aisrp.org/

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Habryka, in his grant write-up, says: "I generally think that hackathons and retreats for researchers can be very valuable, allowing for focused thinking in a new environment. I think the AI Safety Camp is held at a relatively low cost, in a part of the world (Europe) where there exist few other opportunities for potential new researchers to spend time thinking about these topics, and some promising people have attended. " He also notes two positive things: (1) The attendees of the second camp all produced an artifact of their research (e.g. an academic writeup or code repository). (2) Changes to the upcoming camp address some concerns raised in feedback on previous camps.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): No explicit reasons for amount given, but the amount is likely determined by the budget requested by the grantee. For comparison, the amount granted for the previous AI safety camp was $25,000, i.e., a smaller amount. The increased grant size is likely due to the new format of the camp making it longer.
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 9.34%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round as well as intended timing of the 4th AI Safety Camp the grant is for.
Intended funding timeframe in months: 1

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: Habryka writes: "I will not fund another one without spending significantly more time investigating the program."

Other notes: Habryka notes: "After signing off on this grant, I found out that, due to overlap between the organizers of the events, some feedback I got about this camp was actually feedback about the Human Aligned AI Summer School, which means that I had even less information than I thought. In April I said I wanted to talk with the organizers before renewing this grant, and I expected to have at least six months between applications from them, but we received another application this round and I ended up not having time for that conversation." The project funded by the grant would later spin off as the AI Safety Research Program https://aisrp.org/ and the page https://aisrp.org/?page_id=116 would include details on the project outputs.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundHigh Impact Policy Engine60,000.002019-08-30Effective altruism/government policyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/august-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Grantee applied through the online application process, and was selected based on review by the fund managers. Helen Toner was the fund manager most excited about the grant, and responsible for the public write-up.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: According to the grant write-up: "This grant funds part of the cost of a full-time staff member for two years, plus some office and travel costs." Also: "HIPE’s primary activities are researching how to have a positive impact in the UK government; disseminating their findings via workshops, blog posts, etc.; and providing one-on-one support to interested individuals."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant write-up says: "Our reasoning for making this grant is based on our impression that HIPE has already been able to gain some traction as a volunteer organization, and on the fact that they now have the opportunity to place a full-time staff member within the Cabinet Office. [...] The fact that the Cabinet Office is willing to provide desk space and cover part of the overhead cost for the staff member suggests that HIPE is engaging successfully with its core audiences.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Explicit calculations for the amount are not included, but the grant write-up says that it funds "part of the cost of a full-time staff member for two years, plus some office and travel costs." At around the same time, the Meta Fund grants $40,000 to HIPE, also to cover these costs. It is likely that the combined $100,000 covers part or all of the cost.
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 13.67%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round, as well as by the opportunity that has been opened by the potential for a two-year job in the UK civil service if HIPE secures funding
Intended funding timeframe in months: 24

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: The write-up says: "HIPE does not yet have robust ways of tracking its impact, but they expressed strong interest in improving their impact tracking over time. We would hope to see a more fleshed-out impact evaluation if we were asked to renew this grant in the future."

Other notes: Helen Toner, the fund manager most excited about the grant and the author of the grant write-up, writes: "I’ll add that I personally see promise in the idea of services that offer career discussion, coaching, and mentoring in more specialized settings. (Other fund members may agree with this, but it was not part of our discussion when deciding whether to make this grant, so I’m not sure.)". Affected countries: United Kingdom.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundAlexander Gietelink Oldenziel30,000.002019-08-30AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/august-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Grantee applied through the online application process, and was selected based on review by the fund managers. Alex Zhu was the fund manager most excited about the grant, and responsible for the public write-up

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to support the work of Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel who is interning at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) at the time of the grant. The grant money provides additional resources for the grantee to continue digging deeper into the topics after his internship at MIRI ends (while staying in regular contact with MIRI researchers); the write-up estimates that it will last him 1.5 years.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The reasons are roughly similar to the Long-Term Future Fund's past reasons for supporting MIRI and its research agenda, as outlined in the April 2019 report https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Also, Alex Zhu says in the grant write-up: "I have also spoken to him in some depth, and was impressed both by his research taste and clarity of thought."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Amount chosen to be sufficient to allow the grantee to continue digging into AI safety for 1.5 years after his internship with MIRI ends
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 6.83%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round, and also by the grantee's internship with MIRI coming to an end
Intended funding timeframe in months: 18
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundAlexander Siegenfeld20,000.002019-08-30AI safety/deconfusion researchhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/august-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Grantee applied through the online application process, and was selected based on review by the fund managers. Alex Zhu was the fund manager most excited about the grant, and responsible for the public write-up

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project

Intended use of funds: Grant for "Characterizing the properties and constraints of complex systems and their external interactions." Specifically, the grantee's "His goal is to get a better conceptual understanding of multi-level world models by coming up with better formalisms for analyzing complex systems at differing levels of scale, building off of the work of Yaneer Bar-Yam." Also: "Alexander plans to publish a paper on his research; it will be evaluated by researchers at MIRI, helping him decide how best to pursue further work in this area."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Alex Zhu says in the grant write-up: "I decided to recommend funding to Alexander because I think his research directions are promising, and because I was personally impressed by his technical abilities and his clarity of thought. Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a MIRI researcher, was also impressed enough by Alexander to recommend that the Fund support him." A conflict of interest is also declared: "Alexander and I have been friends since our undergraduate years at MIT."

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Other notes: Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.55%.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundEffective Altruism Russia28,000.002019-03-20Epistemic institutionshttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted). The grant would ultimately not be funded by CEA; while CEA was deciding whether to fund the grant, a private donor stepped in to fund the grant.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to Mikhail Yagudin for Effective Altruism Russia to give copies of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to the winners of EGMO 2019 and IMO 2020.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: In the grant write-up, Oliver Habryka explains his evaluation of the grant as based on three questions: (1) What effects does reading HPMOR have on people? (2) How good of a target group are Math Olympiad winners for these effects? (3) Is the team competent enough to execute on their plan?

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee). The comments include more discussion of the unit economics of the grant, and whether the effective cost of $43/copy is reasonable
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.03%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. No specific timing-related considerations are discussed. The need to secure money in advance of the events for which the money will be used likely affected the timing of the application

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) There is a lot of criticism and discussion of the grant in the comments. The grant would ultimately not be funded by CEA; while CEA was deciding whether to fund the grant, a private donor stepped in to fund the grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundDavid Girardo30,000.002019-03-20AI safety/deconfusion researchhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project

Intended use of funds: Grantee is doing independent deconfusion research for AI safety. His angle of attack is to elucidate the ontological primitives for representing hierarchical abstractions, drawing from his experience with type theory, category theory, differential geometry, and theoretical neuroscience.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The main investigator and influencer for the grant, Alex Zhu, finds the research directions promising. Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a MIRI researcher, has also recommended that grantee get funding.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.25%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. No specific timing-related considerations are discussed

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: The quality of the grantee's work will be assessed by researchers at MIRI

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Alex Zhu and is also included in the cross-post of the grant decision to the Effective Altruism Forum at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) but the comments on the post do not discuss this specific grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundTegan McCaslin30,000.002019-03-20AI safety/forecastinghttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project

Intended use of funds: Grant for independent research projects relevant to AI forecasting and strategy, including (but not necessarily limited to) some of the following: (1) Does the trajectory of AI capability development match that of biological evolution? (2) How tractable is long-term forecasting? (3) How much compute did evolution use to produce intelligence? (4)Benchmarking AI capabilities against insects. Short doc on (1) and (2) at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hTLrLXewF-_iJiefyZPF6L677bLrUTo2ziy6BQbxqjs/edit

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Reasons for the grant from Oliver Habryka, the main influencer, include: (1) It's easier to relocate someone who has already demonstrated trust and skills than to find someone completely new, (2.1) It's important to give good researchers runway while they find the right place. Habryka notes: "my brief assessment of Tegan’s work was not the reason why I recommended this grant, and if Tegan asks for a new grant in 6 months to focus on solo research, I will want to spend significantly more time reading her output and talking with her, to understand how these questions were chosen and what precise relation they have to forecasting technological progress in AI."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee). Habryka also mentions that he is interested only in providing limited runway, and would need to assess much more carefully for a more long-term grant
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.25%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. However, it is also related to the grantee's situation (she has just quit her job at AI Impacts, and needs financial runway to continue pursuing promising research projects)
Intended funding timeframe in months: 6

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: The grant investigator Oliver Habryka notes: "if Tegan asks for a new grant in 6 months to focus on solo research, I will want to spend significantly more time reading her output and talking with her, to understand how these questions were chosen and what precise relation they have to forecasting technological progress in AI."

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) The comments on the post do not discuss this specific grant, but a grant to Lauren Lee that includes somewhat similar reasoning (providing people runway after they leave their jobs, so they can explore better) attracts some criticism.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundMetaculus70,000.002019-03-20Epistemic institutions/forecastinghttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to Anothony Aguirre to expand the Metaculus prediction platform along with its community. Metaculus.com is a fully-functional prediction platform with ~10,000 registered users and >120,000 predictions made to date on more than >1000 questions. The two major high-priority expansions are: (1) An integrated set of extensions to improve user interaction and information-sharing. This would include private messaging and notifications, private groups, a prediction “following” system to create micro-teams within individual questions, and various incentives and systems for information-sharing. (2) Link questions into a network. Users would express links between questions, from very simple (“notify me regarding question Y when P(X) changes substantially) to more complex (“Y happens only if X happens, but not conversely”, etc.) Information can also be gleaned from what users actually do.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant investigator and main influencer, Oliver Habryka, refers to reasoning included in the grant to Ozzie Gooen for Foretold, that is made in the same batch of grants and described at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) He also lists these reasons for liking Metaculus: (1) Valuable service in the past few years, (2) Cooperation with the X-risk space to get answers to important questions

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The grantee requested $150,000, but Oliver Habryka, the grant investigator, was not confident enough in the grant to recommend the full amount. Some concerns mentioned: (1) Lack of a dedicated full-time resource, (2) Overlap with the Good Judgment Project, that reduces its access to resources and people
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 7.58%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) The comments discuss this and the other forecasting grants, and include the question "why are you acting as grant-givers here rather than as special interest investors?" It is also included in a list of potentially concerning grants in a portfolio evaluation comment https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions#d4YHzSJnNWmyxf6HM (GW, IR) by Evan Gaensbauer.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundJacob Lagerros27,000.002019-03-20AI safety/forecastinghttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project|Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to build a private platform where AI safety and policy researchers have direct access to a base of superforecaster-equivalents. Lagerros previously received two grants to work on the project: a half-time salary from Effective Altruism Grants, and a grant for direct project expenses from Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer notes the same high-level reasons for the grant as for similar grants to Anothony Aguirre (Metaculus) and Ozzie Gooen (Foretold); the general reasons are explained in the grant writeup for Gooen. Habryka also mentions Lagerros being around the community for 3 years, and having done useful owrk and received other funding. Habryka mentions he did not assess the grant in detail; the main reason for granting from the Long-Term Future Fund was due to logistical complications with other grantmakers (FHI and BERI), who already vouched for the value of the project

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.92%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) The comments discuss this and the other forecasting grants, and include the question "why are you acting as grant-givers here rather than as special interest investors?" It is also included in a list of potentially concerning grants in a portfolio evaluation comment https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions#d4YHzSJnNWmyxf6HM (GW, IR) by Evan Gaensbauer.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundOrpheus Lummis10,000.002019-03-20AI safety/upskillinghttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project

Intended use of funds: Grant for upskilling in contemporary AI techniques, deep RL and AI safety, before pursuing a ML PhD. Notable planned subprojects: (1) Engaging with David Krueger’s AI safety reading group at Mila (then known as the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms) (2) Starting & maintaining a public index of AI safety papers, to help future literature reviews and to complement https://vkrakovna.wordpress.com/ai-safety-resources/ as a standalone wiki-page (eg at http://aisafetyindex.net ) (3) From-scratch implementation of seminal deep RL algorithms (4) Going through textbooks: Goodfellow Bengio Courville 2016, Sutton Barto 2018 (5) Possibly doing the next AI Safety camp (6) Building a prioritization tool for English Wikipedia using NLP, building on the literature of quality assessment (https://paperpile.com/shared/BZ2jzQ) (7) Studying the AI Alignment literature

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka is impressed with the results of the AI Safety Unconference organized by Lummis after NeurIPS with Long-Term Future Fund money. However, he is not confident of the grant, writing: "I don’t know Orpheus very well, and while I have received generally positive reviews of their work, I haven’t yet had the time to look into any of those reviews in detail, and haven’t seen clear evidence about the quality of their judgment." Habryka also favors more time for self-study and reflection, and is excited about growing the Montral AI alignment community. Finally, Habryka thinks the grant amount is small and is unlikely to have negative consequences

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee). The small amount is also one reason grant investigator Oliver Habryka is comfortable making the grant despite not investigating thoroughly
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.08%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) The comments on the post do not discuss this specific grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundLauren Lee20,000.002019-03-20Rationality communityhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted). The grant would ultimately be funded by a private donor after CEA declined to fund the grant due to it not meeting the necessary legal requirements for individual grants.

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project

Intended use of funds: Grant for working to prevent burnout and boost productivity within the EA and X-risk communities. From the grant application: (1) Grant requested to spend the coming year thinking about rationality and testing new projects. (2) The goal is to help individuals and orgs in the x-risk community orient towards and achieve their goals. (A) Training the skill of dependability. (B) Thinking clearly about AI risk. (C) Reducing burnout. (3) Measurable outputs include programs with 1-on-1 sessions with individuals or orgs, X-risk orgs spending time/money on services, writings or talks, workshops with feedback forms, and improved personal effectiveness

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Habryka describes his grant reasoning as follows: "In sum, this grant hopefully helps Lauren to recover from burning out, get the new rationality projects she is working on off the ground, potentially identify a good new niche for her to work in (alone or at an existing organization), and write up her ideas for the community."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.17%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round
Intended funding timeframe in months: 6

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habrkya qualifies the likelihood of giving another grant as follows: "I think that she should probably aim to make whatever she does valuable enough that individuals and organizations in the community wish to pay her directly for her work. It’s unlikely that I would recommend renewing this grant for another 6 month period in the absence of a relatively exciting new research project/direction, and if Lauren were to reapply, I would want to have a much stronger sense that the projects she was working on were producing lots of value before I decided to recommend funding her again."

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) The grant receives criticism in the comments, including 'This is ridiculous, I'm sure she's a great person but please don't use the gift you received to provide sinecures to people "in the community"'. The grant would ultimately be funded by a private donor after CEA declined to fund the grant due to it not meeting the necessary legal requirements for individual grants.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundKocherga50,000.002019-03-20Rationality communityhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to Vyacheslav Matyuhin for Kocherga, an offline community hub for rationalists and EAs in Moscow. Kocherga's concrete plans with the grant include: (1) Add 2 more people to the team. (2) Implement a new community-building strategy. (3) Improve the rationalty workshops.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka notes that the Russian rationality community has been successful, with projects such as https://lesswrong.ru (Russian translation of LessWrong sequences), kickstarter to distribute copies of HPMOR, and Kocherga, a financially self-sustaining anti-cafe in Moscow that hosts a variety of events for roughly 100 attendees per week. The grant reasoning references the LessWrong post https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WmfapdnpFfHWzkdXY/rationalist-community-hub-in-moscow-3-years-retrospective (GW, IR) by Kocherga. The grant is being made by the Long-Term Future Fund because the EA Meta Fund decided not to make it

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.42%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR). Affected countries: Russia.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundConnor Flexman20,000.002019-03-20AI safety/forecastinghttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project

Intended use of funds: Grant to perform independent research in collaboration with John Salvatier

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant was originally requested by John Salvatier (who is already funded by an EA Grant), as a grant to Salvatier to hire Flexman to help him. But Oliver Habryka (the primary person on whose recommendation the grant was made) ultimately decided to give the money to Flexman to give him more flexibility to switch if the work with Salvatier does not go well. Despite the reservations, Habryka considers significant negative consequences unlkely. Habryka also says: "I assign some significant probability that this grant can help Connor develop into an excellent generalist researcher of a type that I feel like EA is currently quite bottlenecked on." Habryka has two other reservations: potential conflict of interest because he lives in the same house as the recipient, and lack of concrete, externally verifiable evidence of competence

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.17%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) Habryka was the primary person on whose recommendation the grant was made. Habryka replies to a comment giving ideas on what independent research Flexman might produce if he stops working with Salvatier.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundNikhil Kunapuli30,000.002019-03-20AI safety/deconfusion researchhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the March 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project

Intended use of funds: Grantee is doing independent deconfusion research for AI safety. His approach is to develop better foundational understandings of various concepts in AI safety, like safe exploration and robustness to distributional shift, by exploring these concepts in complex systems science and theoretical biology, domains outside of machine learning for which these concepts are also applicable.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Fund manager Alex Zhu says: "I recommended that we fund Nikhil because I think Nikhil’s research directions are promising, and because I personally learn a lot about AI safety every time I talk with him."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.25%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. No specific timing-related considerations are discussed

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: Alex Zhu, in his grant write-up, says that the quality of the work will be assessed by researchers at MIRI. Although it is not explicitly stated, it is likely that this evaluation will influence the decision of whether to make further grants

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Alex Zhu and is also included in the cross-post of the grant decision to the Effective Altruism Forum at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) but the comments on the post do not discuss this specific grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundEli Tyre30,000.002019-03-20Epistemic institutionshttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to support projects for rationality and community building interventions. Example projects: facilitating conversations between top people in AI alignment, organization advanced workshops on double crux, doing independent research projects such as https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tj8QP2EFdP8p54z6i/historical-mathematicians-exhibit-a-birth-order-effect-too (GW, IR) (evaluating burth order effects in mathematicians), providing new EAs and rationalists with advice and guidance on how to get traction on working on important problems, and helping John Salvatier develop techniques around skill transfer. Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka writes: "the goal of this grant is to allow [Eli Tyre] to take actions with greater leverage by hiring contractors, paying other community members for services, and paying for other varied expenses associated with his projects."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigation and main influencer is excited about the projects Tyre is interested in working on, and writes: "Eli has worked on a large variety of interesting and valuable projects over the last few years, many of them too small to have much payment infrastructure, resulting in him doing a lot of work without appropriate compensation. I think his work has been a prime example of picking low-hanging fruit by using local information and solving problems that aren’t worth solving at scale, and I want him to have resources to continue working in this space."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.25%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decision (GW, IR).
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundRobert Miles39,000.002019-03-20AI safety/content creation/videohttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted).

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to create video content on AI alignment. Grantee has a YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLB7AzTwc6VFZrBsO2ucBMg (average 20,000 views per video) and also creates videos for the Computerphile channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TYT1QfdfsM (often more than 100,000 views per video).

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka favors the grant for these reasons: (1) Grantee explains AI alignment as primarily a technical problem, not a moral or political problem, (2) Grantee does not politicize AI safety, (3) Grantee's goal is to create interest in these problems from future researchers, and not to simply get as large of an audience as possible. Habryka notes that the grantee is the first skilled person in the X-risk community working full-time on producing video content. "Being the very best we have in this skill area, he is able to help the community in a number of novel ways (for example, he’s already helping existing organizations produce videos about their ideas)." In the previous grant round, the grantee had requested funding for a collaboration with RAISE to produce videos for them, but Habryka felt it was better to fund the grantee directly and allow him to decide which organizations he wanted to help with his videos.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.22%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Donor retrospective of the donation: Several followup grants to Robert Miles suggest continued satisfaction with the grant outcome.

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) in addition to being on https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations (the grant page). As of 2023-11-26, this grant is missing from the grants database https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/grants?fund=Long-Term%2520Future%2520Fund&sort=round but is still listed on the payout page for that batch of grants.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundMachine Intelligence Research Institute50,000.002019-03-20AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigation and influencer Oliver Habryka believes that MIRI is making real progress in its approach of "creating a fundamental piece of theory that helps humanity to understand a wide range of powerful phenomena" He notes that MIRI started work on the alignment problem long before it became cool, which gives him more confidence that they will do the right thing and even their seemingly weird actions may be justified in ways that are not yet obvious. He also thinks that both the research team and ops staff are quite competent

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Habryka offers the following reasons for giving a grant of just $50,000, which is small relative to the grantee budget: (1) MIRI is in a solid position funding-wise, and marginal use of money may be lower-impact. (2) There is a case for investing in helping grow a larger and more diverse set of organizations, as opposed to putting money in a few stable and well-funded onrganizations.
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.42%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: Oliver Habryka writes: "I can see arguments that we should expect additional funding for the best teams to be spent well, even accounting for diminishing margins, but on the other hand I can see many meta-level concerns that weigh against extra funding in such cases. Overall, I find myself confused about the marginal value of giving MIRI more money, and will think more about that between now and the next grant round."

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) . Despite these, Habryka recommends a relatively small grant to MIRI, because they are already relatively well-funded and are not heavily bottlenecked on funding. However, he ultimately decides to grant some amount to MIRI, giving some explanation. He says he will think more about this before the next funding round.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundCenter for Applied Rationality150,000.002019-03-20Epistemic institutionshttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: The grant is to help the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) survive as an organization for the next few months (i.e., till the next grant round, which is 3 months later) without having to scale down operations. CFAR is low on finances because they did not run a 2018 fundraiser. because they felt that running a fundraiser would be in bad taste after what they considered a messup on their part in the Brent Dill situation

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka thinks CFAR intro workshops have had positive impact in 3 ways: (1) establishing epistemic norms, (2) training, and (3) recruitment into the X-risk network (especially AI safety). He also thinks CFAR faces many challenges, including the departure of many key employees, the difficulty of attracting top talent, and a dilution of its truth-seeking focus. However, he is enthusiastic about joint CFAR/MIRI workshops for programmers, where CFAR provides instructors. His final reason for donating is to avoid CFAR having to scale down due to its funding shortfall because it didn't run the 2018 fundraiser

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The grant amount, which is the largest in this grant round from the EA Long-Term Future Fund, is chosen to be sufficient for CFAR to continue operating as usual till the next grant round from the EA Long-Term Future Fund (in about 3 months). Habryka further elaborates in https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-recommendations#uhH4ioNbdaFrwGt4e (GW, IR) in reply to Milan Griffes, explaining why the grant is large and unrestricted
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 16.25%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round, as well as by CFAR's time-sensitive financial situation; the grant round is a few months after the end of 2018, so the shortfall of funds raised because of not conducting the 2018 fundraiser is starting to hit on the finances
Intended funding timeframe in months: 3

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka writes: "I didn’t have enough time this grant round to understand how the future of CFAR will play out; the current grant amount seems sufficient to ensure that CFAR does not have to take any drastic action until our next grant round. By the next grant round, I plan to have spent more time learning and thinking about CFAR’s trajectory and future, and to have a more confident opinion about what the correct funding level for CFAR is."

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) In the comments, Milan Griffes asks why such a large, unrestricted grant is being made to CFAR despite these concerns, and also what Habryka hopes to learn about CFAR before the next grant round. There are replies from Peter McCluskey and Habryka, with some further comment back-and-forth.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundAI Safety Camp25,000.002019-03-20AI safety/technical research/talent pipelinehttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted).

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to fund an upcoming camp in Madrid being organized by AI Safety Camp in April 2019. The camp consists of several weeks of online collaboration on concrete research questions, culminating in a 9-day intensive in-person research camp. The goal is to support aspiring researchers of AI alignment to boost themselves into productivity.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka mentions that: (1) He has a positive impression of the organizers and has received positive feedback from participants in the first two AI Safety Camps. (2) A greater need to improve access to opportunities in AI alignment for people in Europe. Habryka also mentions an associated greater risk of making the AI Safety Camp the focal point of the AI safety community in Europe, which could cause problems if the quality of the people involved isn't high. He mentions two more specific concerns: (a) Organizing long in-person events is hard, and can lead to conflict, as the last two camps did. (b) People who don't get along with the organizers may find themselves shut out of the AI safety network.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee).
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.71%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by the timing of the camp (which is scheduled for April 2019; the grant is being made around the same time) as well as the timing of the grant round.
Intended funding timeframe in months: 1

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Habryka writes: "I would want to engage with the organizers a fair bit more before recommending a renewal of this grant."

Donor retrospective of the donation: The August 2019 grant round would include a $41,000 grant to AI Safety Camp for the next camp, with some format changes. However, in the write-up for that grant round, Habryka says " In April I said I wanted to talk with the organizers before renewing this grant, and I expected to have at least six months between applications from them, but we received another application this round and I ended up not having time for that conversation." Also: "I will not fund another one without spending significantly more time investigating the program."

Other notes: Grantee in the grant document is listed as Johannes Heidecke, but the grant is for the AI Safety Camp. The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) Grant decision was coordinated with Effective Altruism Grants (specifically, Nicole Ross of CEA) who had considered also making a grant to the camp. Effective Altruism Grants ultimately decided against making the grant, and the Long-Term Future Fund made it instead. Nicole Ross, in the evaluation by EA Grants, mentions the same concerns that Habryka does: interpersonal conflict and people being shut out of the AI safety community if they don't get along with the camp organizers.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundOught50,000.002019-03-20AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational financial buffer

Intended use of funds: No specific information is shared on how the funds will be used at the margin, but the general description gives an idea: "Ought is a nonprofit aiming to implement AI alignment concepts in real-world applications"

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Donor is explicitly interested in diversifying funder base for donee, who currently receives almost all its funding from only two sources and is trying to change that. Othewise, same reason as with last round of funds https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/november-2018-long-term-future-fund-grants namely "We believe that Ought’s approach is interesting and worth trying, and that they have a strong team. [...] 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."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): In write-up for previous grant at https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/november-2018-long-term-future-fund-grants of $10,000, donor says: "Our understanding is that hiring is currently more of a bottleneck for them than funding, so we are only making a small grant." The amount this time is bigger ($50,000) but the general principle likely continues to apply
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.42%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): In the previous grant round, donor had said "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." Thus, it makes sense to donate again in this round

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Matt Wage and is also included in the cross-post of the grant decision to the Effective Altruism Forum at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) but the comments on the post do not discuss this specific grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundForetold70,000.002019-03-20Epistemic institutions/forecastinghttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant will be mainly used by Ozzie Gooen to pay programmers to work on Foretold at http://www.foretold.io/ a forecasting application that handles full probability distributions. This includes work on Ken.js, a private version of Wikidata that Gooen has started integrating with Foretold

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka gives these reasons for the grant, as well as other forecasting-related grants made to Anthony Aguirre (Metaculus) and Jacob Lagerros: (1) confusion about what is progress and what problems need solving, (2) need for many people to collaborate and document, (3) low-hanging fruit in designing better online platforms for making intellectual progress -- Habryka works on LessWrong 2.0 for that reason, and Gooen has past experience in the space with his building of Guesstimate, (4) promise and tractability for forecasting platforms in particular (for instance, work by Philip Tetlock and work by Robin Hanson), (5) Even though some platforms, such as Predictionbook and Guesstimate, did not get the traction they expected, others like the Good Judgment Project have been successful, so one should not overgeneralize from a few failures. In addition, Habryka has a positive impression of Gooen in both in-person interaction and online writing

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 7.58%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined partly by timing of grant round. Gooen was a recipient of a previous $20,000 grant from the same fund (the EA Long-Term Future Fund) and found the money very helpful. He applied for more money in this round to scale the project up further

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) The comments discuss this and the other forecasting grants, and include the question "why are you acting as grant-givers here rather than as special interest investors?" It is also included in a list of potentially concerning grants in a portfolio evaluation comment https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions#d4YHzSJnNWmyxf6HM (GW, IR) by Evan Gaensbauer.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundAlexander Turner30,000.002019-03-20AI safety/agent foundationshttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project

Intended use of funds: Grant for building towards a “Limited Agent Foundations” thesis on mild optimization and corrigibility. Grantee is a third-year computer science PhD student funded by a graduate teaching assistantship; to dedicate more attention to alignment research, he is applying for one or more trimesters of funding (spring term starts April 1).

Donor reason for selecting the donee: In the grant write-up, Oliver Habryka explains that he is excited by (a) Turner's posts to LessWrong reviewing many math textbooks useful for thinking about the alignment problem, (b) Turner not being intimidated by the complexity of the problem, and (c) Turner writing up his thoughts and hypotheses in a clear way, seeking feedback on them early, and making a set of novel contributions to an interesting sub-field of AI Alignment quite quickly (in the form of his work on impact measures, on which he recently collaborated with the DeepMind AI Safety team).

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.25%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. No specific timing-related considerations are discussed
Intended funding timeframe in months: 4

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) The comments on the post do not discuss this specific grant. As of 2023-11-26, the grants database https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/grants?fund=Long-Term%2520Future%2520Fund&sort=round does not include this grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundEffective Altruism Zürich17,900.002019-03-20AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: A two-day workshop by Alex Lintz and collaborators from EA Zürich for effective altruists interested in AI governance careers, with the goals of giving participants background on the space, offering career advice, and building community.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Donor writes: "We agree with their assessment that this space is immature and hard to enter, and believe their suggested plan for the workshop looks like a promising way to help participants orient to careers in AI governance."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.93%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. No specific timing-related considerations are discussed
Intended funding timeframe in months: 1

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Helen Toner and is also included in the cross-post of the grant decision to the Effective Altruism Forum at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) but the comments on the post do not discuss this specific grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundTessa Alexanian26,250.002019-03-20Biosecurity and pandemic preparednesshttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: A one day biosecurity summit, immediately following the SynBioBeta industry conference.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.84%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. No specific timing-related considerations are discussed
Intended funding timeframe in months: 1

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Matt Wage and is also included in the cross-post of the grant decision to the Effective Altruism Forum at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) but the comments on the post do not discuss this specific grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundShahar Avin40,000.002019-03-20AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Hiring an academic research assistant and other miscellaneous research expenses, for scaling up scenario role-play for AI strategy research and training.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Donor writes: "We think positively of Shahar’s past work (for example this report), and multiple people we trust recommended that we fund him." The linked report is https://maliciousaireport.com/

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.33%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. No specific timing-related considerations are discussed

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Matt Wage and is also included in the cross-post of the grant decision to the Effective Altruism Forum at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) but the comments on the post do not discuss this specific grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundLucius Caviola50,000.002019-03-20Effective altruism/long-termismhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted). Donee also applied to the EA Meta Fund (another of the Effective Altruism Funds) and the total funding for the donee was split between the funds

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project

Intended use of funds: Part of the costs for a 2-year postdoc at Harvard working with Professor Joshua Greene. Grantee plans to study the psychology of effective altruism and long-termism. The funding from the Long-Term Future Fund is roughly intended to cover the part of the costs that corresponds to the work on long-termism

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Total funding requested by the donee appears to be $130,000. Of this, $80,000 is provided by the EA Meta Fund in their March 2019 grant round https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/march-2019-ea-meta-fund-grants to cover the donee's work on effective altruism, while the remaining $50,000 is provided through this grant by the Long-Term Future Fund, and covers the work on long-termism. The reason for splitting funding in this way is not articulated
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.42%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. No specific timing-related considerations are discussed. However, the write-up for the $80,000 grant provided by the EA Meta Fund https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/march-2019-ea-meta-fund-grants calls the grant a "time-bounded, specific opportunity that requires funding to initiate and explore" and similar reasoning may also apply to the $50,000 Long-Term Future Fund grant
Intended funding timeframe in months: 24

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Matt Wage and is also included in the cross-post of the grant decision to the Effective Altruism Forum at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) but the comments on the post do not discuss this specific grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundAnand Srinivasan30,000.002019-03-20AI safety/deconfusion researchhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project

Intended use of funds: Grantee is doing independent deconfusion research for AI safety. His angle of attack is to develop a framework that will allow researchers to make provable claims about what specific AI systems can and cannot do, based off of factors like their architectures and their training processes.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grantee worked with main grant influencer Alex Zhu at an enterprise software company that they cofounded. Alex Zhu says in his grant write-up: "I recommended that we fund Anand because I think Anand’s research directions are promising, and I personally learn a lot about AI safety every time I talk with him."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely to be the amount requested by the donee in the application (this is not stated explicitly by either the donor or the donee)
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.25%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. No specific timing-related considerations are discussed

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: Alex Zhu, in his grant write-up, says that the quality of the work will be assessed by researchers at MIRI. Although it is not explicitly stated, it is likely that this evaluation will influence the decision of whether to make further grants

Other notes: The quality of grantee's work will be judged by researchers at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. The grant reasoning is written up by Alex Zhu and is also included in the cross-post of the grant decision to the Effective Altruism Forum at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) but the comments on the post do not discuss this specific grant.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundForetold20,000.002018-11-29Epistemic institutions/forecastinghttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/november-2018-long-term-future-fund-grants Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the November 2018 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Ozzie Gooen plans to build an online community of EA forecasters, researchers, and data scientists to predict variables of interest to the EA community. Ozzie proposed using the platform to answer a range of questions, including examples like “How many Google searches will there be for reinforcement learning in 2020?” or “How many plan changes will 80,000 hours cause in 2020?”, and using the results to help EA organizations and individuals to prioritize. The grant funds the project's basic setup and initial testing. The community and tool would later get created with the name Foretold; it is available at https://www.foretold.io/

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant decision was made based on past success by Ozzie Gooen with Guesstimate https://www.getguesstimate.com/ as well as belief both in the broad value of the project and the specifics of the project plan.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Amount likely determined by the specifics of the project plan and the scope of this round of funding, namely, the project's basic setup and initial testing.
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 20.94%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round, and also by the donee's desire to start the project

Donor retrospective of the donation: The Long-Term Future Fund would make a followup grant of $70,000 to Foretold in the April 2019 grant round https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendations see also https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) for more detail
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundOught10,000.002018-11-29AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/november-2018-long-term-future-fund-grants Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the November 2018 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Grantee is a nonprofit aiming to implement AI alignment concepts in real-world applications.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "We believe that Ought's approach is interesting and worth trying, and that they have a strong team. [...] 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."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The grant page says "Our understanding is that hiring is currently more of a bottleneck for them than funding, so we are only making a small grant."
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 10.47%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: The grant page says "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." This suggests that Ought will be considered for future grant rounds

Donor retrospective of the donation: The Long-Term Future Fund would make a $50,000 grant to Ought in the April 2019 grant round, suggesting that this grant would be considered a success
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundMachine Intelligence Research Institute40,000.002018-11-29AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/november-2018-long-term-future-fund-grants Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the November 2018 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: The grant page links to MIRI's research directions post https://intelligence.org/2018/11/22/2018-update-our-new-research-directions/ and to MIRI's 2018 fundraiser post https://intelligence.org/2018/11/26/miris-2018-fundraiser/ saying "According to their fundraiser post, MIRI believes it will be able to find productive uses for additional funding, and gives examples of ways additional funding was used to support their work this year."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page links to MIRI's research directions post https://intelligence.org/2018/11/22/2018-update-our-new-research-directions/ and says "We believe that this research represents one promising approach to AI alignment research."

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round

Donor retrospective of the donation: The Long-Term Future Fund would make a similarly sized grant ($50,000) in its next grant round in April 2019, suggesting that it was satisfied with the outcome of the grant

Other notes: Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 41.88%.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundAI summer school21,000.002018-11-29AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/november-2018-long-term-future-fund-grants Grant to fund the second year of a summer school on AI safety, aiming to familiarize potential researchers with interesting technical problems in the field. Last year’s iteration of this event appears to have gone well, per https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bXLi3n2jrfqRwoSTH/human-aligned-ai-summer-school-a-summary (GW, IR) and private information available to donor. Donor believes that well-run education efforts of this kind are valuable (where “well-run” refers to the quality of the intellectual content, the participants, and the logistics of the event), and feels confident enough that this particular effort will be well-run. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 21.99%.
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future FundAI Safety Unconference4,500.002018-11-29AI safetyhttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/november-2018-long-term-future-fund-grants Orpheus Lummis and Vaughn DiMarco are organizing an unconference on AI Alignment on the last day of the NeurIPS conference, with the goal of facilitating networking and research on AI Alignment among a diverse audience of AI researchers with and without safety backgrounds. Based on interaction with the organizers and some participants, the donor feels this project is worth funding. However, the donee is still not sure if the unconference will be held, so the grant is conditional to the donee deciding to proceed. The grant would fully fund the request. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.71%.
Open PhilanthropyCenter for a New American Security260,000.002017-08Global catastrophic riskshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/center-for-a-new-american-security-richard-danzig-outreach-on-technological-risk Grant awarded to support outreach by Richard Danzig,1 former Secretary of the Navy, on technological risks. Specifically, this funding will allow Mr. Danzig to revise and publish an already-drafted manuscript exploring and providing guidance on issues facing the US government related to potential risks from advanced technology (e.g., biosecurity, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence risks). The funding would be used by Dr. Danzig to produce Technology Roulette https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/technology-roulette a report intended for the national security community detailing the management of risks from losing control of advanced technology. Announced: 2017-10-16.
Open PhilanthropyUCLA School of Law1,536,222.002017-05AI safetyhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/potential-risks-advanced-artificial-intelligence/ucla-artificial-intelligence-governance Grant to support work on governance related to AI risk led by Edward Parson and Richard Re. Announced: 2017-07-27.

Donation amounts by donee and year

Donee Donors influenced Cause area Metadata Total 2020 2019 2018 2017
UCLA School of Law Open Philanthropy (filter this donor) Tw WP Site 1,536,222.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1,536,222.00
Center for a New American Security Open Philanthropy (filter this donor) 260,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 260,000.00
Machine Intelligence Research Institute Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) AI safety FB Tw WP Site CN GS TW 190,000.00 100,000.00 50,000.00 40,000.00 0.00
Center for Applied Rationality Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) Rationality FB Tw WP Site TW 150,000.00 0.00 150,000.00 0.00 0.00
80,000 Hours Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) Career coaching/life guidance FB Tw WP Site 100,000.00 100,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
AI Safety Camp Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 95,000.00 0.00 95,000.00 0.00 0.00
Foretold Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 90,000.00 0.00 70,000.00 20,000.00 0.00
AI Impacts Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) AI safety Site 75,000.00 75,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Center for Human-Compatible AI Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) AI safety WP Site TW 75,000.00 75,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Metaculus Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 70,000.00 0.00 70,000.00 0.00 0.00
High Impact Policy Engine Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 60,000.00 0.00 60,000.00 0.00 0.00
Ought Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) AI safety Site 60,000.00 0.00 50,000.00 10,000.00 0.00
Kocherga Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 50,000.00 0.00 50,000.00 0.00 0.00
Lucius Caviola Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 50,000.00 0.00 50,000.00 0.00 0.00
Shahar Avin Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 40,000.00 0.00 40,000.00 0.00 0.00
Robert Miles Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 39,000.00 0.00 39,000.00 0.00 0.00
Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 30,000.00 0.00 30,000.00 0.00 0.00
Alexander Turner Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 30,000.00 0.00 30,000.00 0.00 0.00
Anand Srinivasan Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 30,000.00 0.00 30,000.00 0.00 0.00
David Girardo Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 30,000.00 0.00 30,000.00 0.00 0.00
Eli Tyre Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 30,000.00 0.00 30,000.00 0.00 0.00
Nikhil Kunapuli Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 30,000.00 0.00 30,000.00 0.00 0.00
Tegan McCaslin Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 30,000.00 0.00 30,000.00 0.00 0.00
Effective Altruism Russia Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 28,000.00 0.00 28,000.00 0.00 0.00
Jacob Lagerros Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 27,000.00 0.00 27,000.00 0.00 0.00
Tessa Alexanian Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 26,250.00 0.00 26,250.00 0.00 0.00
Stag Lynn Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 23,000.00 0.00 23,000.00 0.00 0.00
AI summer school Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 21,000.00 0.00 0.00 21,000.00 0.00
Alexander Siegenfeld Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 20,000.00 0.00 20,000.00 0.00 0.00
Connor Flexman Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 20,000.00 0.00 20,000.00 0.00 0.00
Lauren Lee Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 20,000.00 0.00 20,000.00 0.00 0.00
Effective Altruism Zürich Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 17,900.00 0.00 17,900.00 0.00 0.00
Orpheus Lummis Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 10,000.00 0.00 10,000.00 0.00 0.00
Roam Research Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 10,000.00 0.00 10,000.00 0.00 0.00
AI Safety Unconference Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donor) 4,500.00 0.00 0.00 4,500.00 0.00
Total ---- -- 3,377,872.00 350,000.00 1,136,150.00 95,500.00 1,796,222.00

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Donation amounts by donor and year for influencer Helen Toner

Donor Donees Total 2020 2019 2018 2017
Open Philanthropy (filter this donee) Center for a New American Security (filter this donee), UCLA School of Law (filter this donee) 1,796,222.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1,796,222.00
Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund (filter this donee) 80,000 Hours (filter this donee), AI Impacts (filter this donee), AI Safety Camp (filter this donee), AI Safety Unconference (filter this donee), AI summer school (filter this donee), Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel (filter this donee), Alexander Siegenfeld (filter this donee), Alexander Turner (filter this donee), Anand Srinivasan (filter this donee), Center for Applied Rationality (filter this donee), Center for Human-Compatible AI (filter this donee), Connor Flexman (filter this donee), David Girardo (filter this donee), Effective Altruism Russia (filter this donee), Effective Altruism Zürich (filter this donee), Eli Tyre (filter this donee), Foretold (filter this donee), High Impact Policy Engine (filter this donee), Jacob Lagerros (filter this donee), Kocherga (filter this donee), Lauren Lee (filter this donee), Lucius Caviola (filter this donee), Machine Intelligence Research Institute (filter this donee), Metaculus (filter this donee), Nikhil Kunapuli (filter this donee), Orpheus Lummis (filter this donee), Ought (filter this donee), Roam Research (filter this donee), Robert Miles (filter this donee), Shahar Avin (filter this donee), Stag Lynn (filter this donee), Tegan McCaslin (filter this donee), Tessa Alexanian (filter this donee) 1,581,650.00 350,000.00 1,136,150.00 95,500.00 0.00
Total -- 3,377,872.00 350,000.00 1,136,150.00 95,500.00 1,796,222.00

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