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.
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| Donor | Donee | Amount (current USD) | Donation date | Cause area | URL | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Alexander Turner | 220,000.00 | AI safety/technical research | https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/grants?fund=Long-Term%2520Future%2520Fund&sort=round | Donation process: The process for this particular grant is not available, but the general process is for the grantee to submit an application at https://av20jp3z.paperform.co/?fund=Long-Term%20Future%20Fund and get a response within 3 weeks (for most applications) or 2 months (for all applications). Intended use of funds (category): Living expenses during project Intended use of funds: The grants database gives the following intended use of funds: "Year-long salary for shard theory and RL mechanistic interpretability research" Donor reason for selecting the donee: At https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zZ2vq7YEckpunrQS4/long-term-future-fund-april-2023-grant-recommendations#Alexander_Turner___220_000___Year_long_stipend_for_shard_theory_and_RL_mechanistic_interpretability_research (GW, IR) grant evaluator Oliver Habryka writes, explaining the reasoning for this grant and other grants made to Turner: "The basic reasoning here is that despite me not feeling that excited about the research directions Alex keeps choosing, within the direction he has chosen, Alex has done quite high-quality work, and also seems to often have interesting and useful contributions in online discussions and private conversations. I also find his work particularly interesting, since I think that within a broad approach I often expected to be fruitless, Alex has produced more interesting insight than I expected. This in itself has made me more interested in further supporting Alex, since someone producing work that shows that I was at least partially wrong about a research direction being not very promising is more important to incentivize than work whose effects I am pretty certain of. [...] In-short, the more recent steering vector work seems like the kind of “obvious thing to try that could maybe help” that I would really like to saturate with work happening in the field, and the work on formalizing power-seeking theorems is also the kind of stuff that seems worth having done Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): At https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zZ2vq7YEckpunrQS4/long-term-future-fund-april-2023-grant-recommendations#Alexander_Turner___220_000___Year_long_stipend_for_shard_theory_and_RL_mechanistic_interpretability_research (GW, IR) grant evaluator Oliver Habryka writes, explaining the process for deciding the grant amount for this and other grants to Turner: "Another aspect of this grant that I expect to have somewhat wide-ranging consequences is the stipend level we set on. Some basic principles that have lead me to suggest this stipend level: (1) I have been using the anchor of “industry stipend minus 30%” as a useful heuristic for setting stipend levels for LTFF grants. The goal in that heuristic was to find a relatively objective standard that would allow grantees to think about stipend expectations on their own without requiring a lot of back and forth, while hitting a middle ground in the incentive landscape between salaries being so low that lots of top talent would just go into industry instead of doing impactful work, and avoiding grifter problems with people asking for LTFF grants because they expect they will receive less supervision and can probably get away without a ton of legible progress. (2) In general I think self-employed salaries should be ~20-40% higher, to account for additional costs like health insurance, payroll taxes, administration overhead, and other things that an employer often takes care of. Other notes: The Long-Term Future Fund makes a number of other related grants to Turner, including a grant at around the same time of $115,411 for a team led by Turner. The grants all share similar reasoning, that https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zZ2vq7YEckpunrQS4/long-term-future-fund-april-2023-grant-recommendations#Alexander_Turner___220_000___Year_long_stipend_for_shard_theory_and_RL_mechanistic_interpretability_research (GW, IR) describes. The grants database only provides the quarter in which the grant was made (and seems to be off by one quarter); see https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zZ2vq7YEckpunrQS4/long-term-future-fund-april-2023-grant-recommendations#Other_grants_we_made_during_this_period (GW, IR) for the precise month. Intended funding timeframe in months: 12. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Alexander Turner | 115,411.00 | AI safety/technical research | https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/grants?fund=Long-Term%2520Future%2520Fund&sort=round | Donation process: The process for this particular grant is not available, but the general process is for the grantee to submit an application at https://av20jp3z.paperform.co/?fund=Long-Term%20Future%20Fund and get a response within 3 weeks (for most applications) or 2 months (for all applications). Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: The grants database gives the following intended use of funds: "Writing new motivations into a policy network by understanding and controlling its internal decision-influences"; at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zZ2vq7YEckpunrQS4/long-term-future-fund-april-2023-grant-recommendations#Alexander_Turner___220_000___Year_long_stipend_for_shard_theory_and_RL_mechanistic_interpretability_research (GW, IR) (this is mainly about another grant) Oliver Habryka writes: "We also made another grant in 2023 to a team led by Alex Turner for their post on steering vectors for $115,411 (total includes payment to 5 team members, including, without limitation, travel expenses, office space, and stipends)." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5spBue2z2tw4JuDCx/steering-gpt-2-xl-by-adding-an-activation-vector (GW, IR) is the linked post. Donor reason for selecting the donee: At https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zZ2vq7YEckpunrQS4/long-term-future-fund-april-2023-grant-recommendations#Alexander_Turner___220_000___Year_long_stipend_for_shard_theory_and_RL_mechanistic_interpretability_research (GW, IR) grant evaluator Oliver Habryka writes, explaining the reasoning for this grant and other grants made to Turner: "The basic reasoning here is that despite me not feeling that excited about the research directions Alex keeps choosing, within the direction he has chosen, Alex has done quite high-quality work, and also seems to often have interesting and useful contributions in online discussions and private conversations. I also find his work particularly interesting, since I think that within a broad approach I often expected to be fruitless, Alex has produced more interesting insight than I expected. This in itself has made me more interested in further supporting Alex, since someone producing work that shows that I was at least partially wrong about a research direction being not very promising is more important to incentivize than work whose effects I am pretty certain of. [...] In-short, the more recent steering vector work seems like the kind of “obvious thing to try that could maybe help” that I would really like to saturate with work happening in the field, and the work on formalizing power-seeking theorems is also the kind of stuff that seems worth having done Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): At https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zZ2vq7YEckpunrQS4/long-term-future-fund-april-2023-grant-recommendations#Alexander_Turner___220_000___Year_long_stipend_for_shard_theory_and_RL_mechanistic_interpretability_research (GW, IR) grant evaluator Oliver Habryka writes, explaining the process for deciding the grant amount for this and other grants to Turner: "Another aspect of this grant that I expect to have somewhat wide-ranging consequences is the stipend level we set on. Some basic principles that have lead me to suggest this stipend level: (1) I have been using the anchor of “industry stipend minus 30%” as a useful heuristic for setting stipend levels for LTFF grants. The goal in that heuristic was to find a relatively objective standard that would allow grantees to think about stipend expectations on their own without requiring a lot of back and forth, while hitting a middle ground in the incentive landscape between salaries being so low that lots of top talent would just go into industry instead of doing impactful work, and avoiding grifter problems with people asking for LTFF grants because they expect they will receive less supervision and can probably get away without a ton of legible progress. (2) In general I think self-employed salaries should be ~20-40% higher, to account for additional costs like health insurance, payroll taxes, administration overhead, and other things that an employer often takes care of. Other notes: The Long-Term Future Fund makes a number of other related grants to Turner, including a grant at around the same time of $220,000 for 1 year of stipend coverage. The grants all share similar reasoning, that https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zZ2vq7YEckpunrQS4/long-term-future-fund-april-2023-grant-recommendations#Alexander_Turner___220_000___Year_long_stipend_for_shard_theory_and_RL_mechanistic_interpretability_research (GW, IR) describes. The grants database only provides the quarter in which the grant was made; see https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zZ2vq7YEckpunrQS4/long-term-future-fund-april-2023-grant-recommendations#Other_grants_we_made_during_this_period (GW, IR) for the precise month. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Lightcone Infrastructure | 380,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders in the grant round, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff#Lightcone_Infrastructure (GW, IR) "We decided I had a conflict of interest here, so I didn’t have the option to fund them, but if I’d had that option I would have happily done that." He then describes more of this thinking around how Lightcone Infrastructure, through its work on LessWrong and other projects, helps remove trivial inconveniences to people doing the right thing. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the fourth one with a grant to this grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes a $500,000 grant to the grantee from the Casey and Family Foundation, that is participating as a funder in the SFF process for the first time. Although Jed McCaleb also participates as a funder in this round, and has previously granted money to Lightcone Infrastructure, he does not make any grants to Lightcone Infrastructure in this round. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.29%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters | 979,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) "ALLFED noticed something few others had noticed or done much about, that being ready could make a huge difference if the nukes did fly in terms of people not starving to death and civilization holding together, and that almost no effort was being made to get ready. [...] ALLFED is especially interested in very cheap, practical solutions that aren’t going to be fun for anyone, but would promise to get the calories into people, and be able to be implemented at scale when the time comes. I bought the case that the cause was super neglected and in danger of not getting funding, and could have a huge impact even if that was with small probabilities multiplied together. When I did Fermi calculations, this was a very good investment." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the third one with a grant to the grantee. Donor retrospective of the donation: The grant recommendation in the future grant round https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2022-h2-recommendations suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: Grant made via the Players Philanthropy Fund ($100,000) and The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County ($879,000). The other two funders in this SFF grant round (Jed McCaleb and The Casey and Family Foundation) do not make grants to ALLFED. Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) in more detail about the concerns raised: "(1) Capacity. Could ALLFED scale? Could it remain effective, hire and manage well, and so on? Was it mostly the one person who produced value? (2) Amateurism. Basically a ‘yes, thank you, you founded the space, but now we should leave this to the professionals no?’ kind of vibe thing. (3) Feasibility. Are their ideas good? I had this too, as noted above. (4) Honesty. There were concerns, especially around impact calculations." He then goes into details about his thoughts on each of the concerns, in particular on the honesty and ALLFED's previous calculations of its own impact. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 11.05%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | 1,417,000.00 | Longtermism | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Regranting Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommmenders in this grant round, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) "They have some clear wins on their book (e.g. John Wentworth) and my notes indicate I thought the bulk of their targets seemed reasonable, although on reflection that makes me worry about the extent to which ‘seem reasonable’ was an optimization target. It’s another case of ‘find individuals and other places to put small amounts in ways that seem plausibly good and do it’ and it seems like something like SFF should be able to do better but if the applicant pool is this shallow maybe we can’t. As an isolated thing, almost all small grants of these types that are issued without forcing people to apply first seem like they’re net good, but they also end up warping the space and culture around the seeking of such grants, whether or not formal applications have to be involved. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the second one with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: Jaan Tallinn's philanthropy goals as described in https://jaan.online/philanthropy/ set targets in terms of the total amount of endpoint grants, i.e., grants spent on actual grantees and not for regranting. It is not clear how grants to the Long-Term Future Fund are counted, but since the LTFF tends to spend most of its balance in its grant rounds, Tallinn likely expects that the bulk of the money will become endpoint grants shortly. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 16.00%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | 699,000.00 | -- | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Regranting Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders, says in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) "I don’t think we should have been anything like this eager to give money to the EA Infrastructure Fund. [..] That’s not to say I think the fund shouldn’t exist or have money, and especially that if we believe Buck in particular is very good at finding good small targets and small things to do that Buck shouldn’t have the ability to go do that, but this felt very much like overkill and a kind of giving up, especially given the goal of ‘infrastructure.’" Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the first one with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: Jaan Tallinn's philanthropy goals as described in https://jaan.online/philanthropy/ set targets in terms of the total amount of endpoint grants, i.e., grants spent on actual grantees and not for regranting. It is not clear how grants to the Infrastructure Fund are counted, but since the Infrastructure Fund tends to spend most of its balance in its grant rounds, Tallinn likely expects that the bulk of the money will become endpoint grants shortly. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 7.89%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| The Casey and Family Foundation | Lightcone Infrastructure | 500,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders in the grant round, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff#Lightcone_Infrastructure (GW, IR) "We decided I had a conflict of interest here, so I didn’t have the option to fund them, but if I’d had that option I would have happily done that." He then describes more of this thinking around how Lightcone Infrastructure, through its work on LessWrong and other projects, helps remove trivial inconveniences to people doing the right thing. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the fourth one with a grant to this grantee. The Casey and Family Foundation is participating in SFF's process for the first time, and this is its only grant in this round. Other notes: The grant round also includes a $380,000 grant to the grantee from Jaan Tallinn, who has participated in earlier grant rounds and funded Lightcone Infrastructure in several of them. Although Jed McCaleb also participates as a funder in this round, and has previously granted money to Lightcone Infrastructure, he does not make any grants to Lightcone Infrastructure in this round. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 100.00%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Center on Long-Term Risk | 1,218,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) "I was excited by the detailed contents of what they are working on, relative to the baseline the applications set for excitement, but their focus on s-risks was concerning to me. I don’t want to have the debate on this, but I consider concerns about s-risks a bigger thing to be concerned about right now than actual s-risks. They do have a reasonable plan to mitigate the risk of concern about s-risk, and are saying many of the right things when asked, so I came around to it being worth proceeding." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the first one with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: The other two funders in this SFF grant round (Jed McCaleb and The Casey and Family Foundation) do not make grants to the Center on Long-Term Risk. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 13.75%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | The Centre for Long-Term Resilience | 885,000.00 | -- | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) "They had a solid case that they were successfully getting meaningful access for people who would use that access in ways that matter. This was kind of the best case scenario for this sort of thing, where there was relatively less danger of corruption or wasted money compared to the potential for tangible benefit. The bar for such efforts should be quite high. I still think we overfunded because there are others out there and I think SFF overpaid versus its ‘fair share’ here, but that’s not the biggest mistake. I wish we knew how to do such things ‘safely’ in terms of keeping ourselves intact in the process. Until then, I’ll continue to be deeply uncomfortable in such waters." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the second one with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: The SFF website lists the grantee as Alpenglow Group Limited; this is the business name of the Centre for Long-Term Resilience. The other two funders in this SFF grant round (Jed McCaleb and The Casey and Family Foundation) do not make grants to the Centre for Long-Term Resilience. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 9.99%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Ought | 542,000.00 | -- | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) "Ought was a weird case, where I had the strong initial instinct that Ought, as I understood it, was doing a net harmful thing. [...] A lot of others positivity seemed to reflect knowing the people involved, whereas I don’t know them at all. A lot of support seemed to come down to People Doing Thing being present, and faith that those people would look for net positive things and to avoid net bad things generally, and that they had an active eye towards AI Safety. [...] I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this was net harmful, but there was enough disagreement and upside in various ways that I concluded that my expectation was positive, so I no longer felt the need to actively try to stop others from funding." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the second one with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: The other two funders in this SFF grant round (Jed McCaleb and The Casey and Family Foundation) do not make grants to Ought. In https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders in the grant round, writes about his evaluation of Ought's agenda: "They are using GPT-3 to assist in research, to do things like generate questions to ask, or classify data, or do whatever else GPT-3 can do. The goal is to make research easier. However, because it’s good at the things GPT-3 is good at, this is going to be a much bigger deal for those looking to do performative science or publish papers or keep dumping more compute into the same systems over and over again, than it will help those trying to do something genuinely new and valuable. The hard part where one actually thinks isn’t being sped up, while the rest of the process is. Oh no. [...] I read a comment on LessWrong by Jessica Taylor questioning why one of MIRI’s latest plans wasn’t strictly worse than Ought [...] This frames the whole thing on a meta-level as a way to test a theory of how to build an aligned AI. As per Paul’s theory as I understand it, if you can (1) break up a given task into subcomponents and then (2) solve each subcomponent while (3) ensuring each subcomponent is aligned then that could solve the alignment problem with regard to the larger task, so testing to see what types of things can usefully be split into machine tasks, and whether those tasks can be solved, would be some sort of exploration in that direction under some theories. I notice I have both the ‘yeah sure I guess maybe’ instinct here and the mostly-integrated inner-Eliezer-style reaction that very strongly thinks that this represents fundamental confusion and is wrong. In any case, it’s another perspective, and Paul specifically is excited by this path.". Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 6.12%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | AI Safety Camp | 130,000.00 | AI safety | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: It is likely (though not explicitly stated) that the grant funds the upcoming six-month virtual AI Safety Camp from January to June 2022. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the first one with a grant to the grantee. Intended funding timeframe in months: 6 Other notes: The grant is made via Rethink Charity. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.47%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | New Science Research | 500,000.00 | Scientific research | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff#Innovation_Station (GW, IR) "If one could reinvigorate science for real, that seems clearly on the good side, so to the extent that I saw promising such attempts I was excited. There were several proposals in this category looking to directly reinvigorate or enable science of a sort: NewScience, PrivateARPA, SocialMinds@CMU and Ought. NewScience, SocialMinds and PrivateARPA seemed like they were good ideas if we were optimistic about execution. I was able to get there on NewScience, but not on PrivateARPA or SocialMinds." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the second with a grant to this grantee. Other notes: Jed McCaleb and The Casey and Family Foundation, who also participate as funders in this grant round, do not make any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.64%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Topos Institute | 450,000.00 | -- | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders in this grant round, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff#AI_Safety_Paper_Production (GW, IR) "Thus, I was excited to fund late applicant Topos Institute. As far as I could tell, they’re people with strong mathematical chops working on difficult math problems that they think are most important to solve, along the lines they think might actually work. I wouldn’t have chosen many of the details of their focus and approach, and they don’t even buy the concerns over AGI the same way I or Jaan do, but I want them to do what they think is the right thing to do here, and I’m thrilled for any and all efforts of this type, by as many people as possible, so long as they both have the chops and are aligned with us in the sense that they have their eyes on the prize. All sources I asked confirmed that they count." Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders in this grant round, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff#AI_Safety_Paper_Production (GW, IR) "On reflection I regret not giving them more than I did, and I believe this was due to the S-process default curves and them only asking for a reasonable amount of money." Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.08% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the third one with grants to the grantee. Other notes: Although Jed McCaleb and The Casey and Family Foundation also participate as funders in this grant round, they do not make any grants to Topos Institute in this round. Announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Modeling Cooperation | 83,000.00 | AI safety | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the third one with grants to the grantee. Other notes: Grant made via Convergence Analysis. Although Jed McCaleb and The Casey and Family Foundation also participate as funders in this grant round, they do not make any grants to Modeling Cooperation in this round. Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders in the grant round, writes a post https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) about the round that does not seem to mention this grant. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 0.94%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jed McCaleb | Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative | 250,000.00 | AI safety | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support the BERI-CHAI collaboration, This is BERI's collaboration with the Center for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI). See https://existence.org/collaborations/ for BERI's full list of collaborations. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the fourth with grants to the grantee. It is the first round with a grant specifically for this collaboration. Other notes: Jaan Tallinn makes a $248,00 grant to BERI in this grant round for the same collaboration (BERI-CHAI). The Casey and Family Foundation, that also participates as a funder in this grant round, does not make any grants to BERI. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 100.00%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative | 248,000.00 | AI safety | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support the BERI-CHAI collaboration, This is BERI's collaboration with the Center for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI). See https://existence.org/collaborations/ for BERI's full list of collaborations. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the fourth with grants to the grantee. It is the first round with a grant specifically for this collaboration. Other notes: Jed McCaleb makes a $250,000 grant to BERI in this grant round for the same collaboration (BERI-CHAI). The Casey and Family Foundation, that also participates as a funder in this grant round, does not make any grants to BERI. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.80%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | AI Objectives Institute | 485,000.00 | AI safety | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the first one with grants to the grantee. Other notes: Grant made via Foresight Institute. Although Jed McCaleb and The Casey and Family Foundation also participate as funders in this grant round, they do not make any grants to AI Objectives Institute in this round. In https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff#AI_Safety_Paper_Production (GW, IR) Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders in the grant round, expresses his reservations: "Then there’s the people who think the ‘AI Safety’ risk is that things will be insufficiently ‘democratic,’ too ‘capitalist’ or ‘biased’ or otherwise not advance their particular agendas. They care about, in Eliezer’s terminology from Twitter, which monkey gets the poisoned banana first. To the extent that they redirect attention, that’s harmful. [...] I do feel the need to mention one organization here, AIObjectives@Foresight, because they’re the only organization that got funding that I view as an active negative. I strongly objected to the decision to fund them, and would have used my veto on an endorsement if I’d retained the right to veto. I do see that they are doing some amount of worthwhile research into ‘how to make AIs do what humans actually want’ but given what else is on their agenda, I view their efforts as strongly net-harmful, and I’m quite sad that they got money. Some others seemed to view this concern more as a potential ‘poisoning the well’ concern that the cause area would become associated with such political focus, whereas I was object-level concerned about the agenda, and in giving leverage over important things to people who are that wrong about very important things and focused on making the world match their wrong views.". Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.48%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Convergence Analysis | 34,000.00 | AI safety | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support "Research on AI & International Relations" Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the third one with grants to the grantee. Other notes: Although Jed McCaleb and The Casey and Family Foundation also participate as funders in this grant round, they do not make any grants to the grantee. Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders in the grant round, writes a post https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) about the round that does not seem to mention this grant. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.84%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Center for Applied Rationality | 1,207,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round. Grants to CFAR had been made in the first, second, and fourth grant round not the third one. Other notes: Although Jed McCaleb also participates as a funder in this grant round, he does not make any grants to this grantee (Center for Applied Rationality). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 12.69%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | AI Impacts | 221,000.00 | AI safety | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round. Grants to AI Impacts had been made in the second and third grant rounds. Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup grant for AI Impacts in https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations continued satisfaction with the grant outcome. Other notes: The grant round also includes a grant from Jed McCaleb ($82,000) to the same grantee (AI Impacts). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.32%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters | 175,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round. In a previous grant round (2019 Q4), SFF had made a grant to the grantee, but Tallinn had not made any direct grants. Donor retrospective of the donation: The grant recommendation in the future grant round https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2022-h2-recommendations suggests continued satisfaction with the grant outcome. Other notes: Grant made via the Players Philanthropy Fund. Although Jed McCaleb also participates in this grant round as a funder, he does not make any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.84%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Charter Cities Institute | 137,000.00 | Alternate governance/charter cities | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round. In a previous grant round (2019 Q4), SFF had made a grant to the grantee, but Tallinn had not made any direct grants. Donor retrospective of the donation: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders participating in SFF's next grant round (2021 H2) writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff#Orthogonal_Applications (GW, IR) shedding light on why he considered the Charter Cities Institute's application orthogonal to SFF's grantmaking goals: "I talked to them hoping it would be aligned with the mission. [...] What I was looking for on that call was the ability to do things you can’t do in First World countries. In particular, challenge trials seemed like a strong litmus test. If your charter city allows the world to do challenge trials, then it’s super valuable. If it doesn’t, then you might be helping the particular people, but you’re not mostly doing the thing I care about. [...] To fight the blight." Other notes: Although Jed McCaleb also participates in this grant round as a funder, he does not make any grants to this grantee. In Jaan Tallinn's donation log, the donation shows up as being to the "Center for Innovative Governance Research" (this is the organization's formal name); the SFF website states it as being to the Charter Cities Institute. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.44%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Rethink Priorities | 70,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/payouts/may-2021-long-term-future-fund-grants | 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): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: The grant is for "Researching global security, forecasting, and public communication." In more detail: "(1) Global security (conflict, arms control, avoiding totalitarianism) (2) Forecasting (estimating existential risk, epistemic challenges to longtermism) (3) Polling / message testing (identifying longtermist policies, figuring out how to talk about longtermism to the public)." The longtermist hires are Linchuan Zhang, David Reinstein, and 50% of Michael Aird. Donor reason for selecting the donee: Regarding the researchers who would effectively be funded, the grant evaluator Asya Bergal writes at https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/payouts/may-2021-long-term-future-fund-grants#rethink-priorities--70000 "Rethink’s longtermist team is very new and is proposing work on fairly disparate topics, so I think about funding them similarly to how I would think about funding several independent researchers. Their longtermist hires are Linchuan Zhang, David Reinstein, and 50% of Michael Aird (he will be spending the rest of his time as a Research Scholar at FHI). I’m not familiar with David Reinstein. Michael Aird has produced a lot of writing over the past year, some of which I’ve found useful. l haven’t looked at any written work Linchuan Zhang has produced (and I’m not aware of anything major), but he has a good track record in forecasting, I’ve appreciated some of his EA forum comments, and my impression is that several longtermist researchers I know think he’s smart. Evaluating them as independent researchers, I think they’re both new and promising enough that I’m interested in paying for a year of their time to see what they produce." Regarding the intended uses of funds, Bergal writes: "Broadly, I am most excited about the third of these [polling / message testing], because I think there’s a clear and pressing need for it. I think work in the other two areas could be good, but feels highly dependent on the details (their application only described these broad directions)." Bergal links to https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/h566GT4ECfJAB38af/some-quick-notes-on-effective-altruism?commentId=SD7rcJmY5exTR3aRu (GW, IR) for more context. Bergal also gives specific examples on areas she might be interested in. Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): At https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/payouts/may-2021-long-term-future-fund-grants#rethink-priorities--70000 grant evaluator Asya Bergal writes: "We decided to pay 25% of the budget that Rethink requested, which I guessed was our fair share given Rethink’s other funding opportunities." https://80000hours.org/articles/coordination/#when-deciding-where-to-donate-consider-splitting-or-thresholds is linked for more context on fair share. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.24% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The time is shortly after Rethink Priorities started growing its longtermist team, and is a result of Rethink Priorities seeking funding to support the longtermist team's work. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Legal Priorities Project | 135,000.00 | AI safety/governance | https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/payouts/may-2021-long-term-future-fund-grants | Donation process: Grant selected from a pool of applicants. https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/payouts/may-2021-long-term-future-fund-grants#legal-priorities-project--135000 says: "The Legal Priorities Project (LPP) applied for funding to hire Suzanne Van Arsdale and Renan Araújo to conduct academic legal research, and Alfredo Parra to perform operations work. All have previously been involved with the LPP, and Suzanne and Renan contributed to the LPP’s research agenda." Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/payouts/may-2021-long-term-future-fund-grants#legal-priorities-project--135000 says: "Hiring staff to carry out longtermist academic legal research and increase the operational capacity of the organization. The Legal Priorities Project (LPP) applied for funding to hire Suzanne Van Arsdale and Renan Araújo to conduct academic legal research, and Alfredo Parra to perform operations work. All have previously been involved with the LPP, and Suzanne and Renan contributed to the LPP’s research agenda." Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/payouts/may-2021-long-term-future-fund-grants#legal-priorities-project--135000 (written by Daniel Eth) says: "I’m excited about this grant for reasons related to LPP as an organization, the specific hires they would use the grant for, and the proposed work of the new hires." It goes into considerable further detail regarding the reasons. Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Amount likely determined based on the amount needed for the intended uses of the grant funds. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 8.18% |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | AI Safety Camp | 85,000.00 | AI safety/technical research/talent pipeline | https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/may-2021-long-term-future-fund-grants | Donation process: Grant selected from a pool of applicants. This particular grantee had received grants in the past, and the grantmaking process was mainly based on soliciting more reviews and feedback from participants in AI Safety Camps funded by past grants. Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant for "running a virtual and physical camp where selected applicants test their fit for AI safety research." Unlike previous grants, no specific date or time is provided for the grant. Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant page says: "some alumni of the camp reported very substantial positive benefits from attending the camp, while none of them reported noticing any substantial harmful consequences. [...] all alumni I reached out to thought that the camp was at worst, only a slightly less valuable use of their time than what they would have done instead, so the downside risk seems relatively limited. [...] the need for social events and workshops like this is greater than I previously thought, and that they are in high demand among people new to the AI Alignment field. [...] there is enough demand for multiple programs like this one, which reduces the grant’s downside risk, since it means that AI Safety Camp is not substantially crowding out other similar camps. There also don’t seem to be many similar events to AI Safety Camp right now, which suggests that a better camp would not happen naturally, and makes it seem like a bad idea to further reduce the supply by not funding the camp." Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): No specific reasons are given for the amount, but it is larger than previous grants, possibly reflecting the expanded scope of virtual and physical camp. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.15% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round as well as possibly by time taken to collect and process feedback from past grant participants. The pausing of in-person camps during the COVID-19 pandemic may also explain the gap since the previous grant. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Center for Human-Compatible AI | 48,000.00 | AI safety | https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/may-2021-long-term-future-fund-grants | 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): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant for "hiring research engineers to support CHAI’s technical research projects." "This grant is to support Cody Wild and Steven Wang in their work assisting CHAI as research engineers, funded through BERI." Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Evan Hubinger writes: "Overall, I have a very high opinion of CHAI’s ability to produce good alignment researchers—Rohin Shah, Adam Gleave, Daniel Filan, Michael Dennis, etc.—and I think it would be very unfortunate if those researchers had to spend a lot of their time doing non-alignment-relevant engineering work. Thus, I think there is a very strong case for making high-quality research engineers available to help CHAI students run ML experiments. [...] both Cody and Steven have already been working with CHAI doing exactly this sort of work; when we spoke to Adam Gleave early in the evaluation process, he seems to have found their work to be positive and quite helpful. Thus, the risk of this grant hurting rather than helping CHAI researchers seems very minimal, and the case for it seems quite strong overall, given our general excitement about CHAI." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; a grant of $75,000 for a similar purpose was made to the grantee in the Septembe 2020 round, so the timing is likely partly determined by the need to renew funding for the people (Cody Wild and Steven Wang) funded through the previous grant. Other notes: The grant page says: "Adam Gleave [one of the fund managers] did not participate in the voting or final discussion around this grant." The EA Forum post https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/diZWNmLRgcbuwmYn4/long-term-future-fund-may-2021-grant-recommendations (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: 5.15%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | 675,000.00 | Longtermism | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Regranting Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the first with a grant to this grantee. Donor retrospective of the donation: In the next grant round, Tallinn would make an even bigger grant of $1,417,000 to the grantee, suggesting continued satisfaction with the strategy of donating money to the Long-Term Future Fund for regranting. Other notes: As explained at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nLxpFeEs6kAdgjRWz/the-long-term-future-fund-has-room-for-more-funding-right?commentId=9cBRWH9L6BDhd5TCF (GW, IR) the grantee is applying because the total volume of quality applications it would like to fund exceeds its own funds available. Although Jed McCaleb also participates as a funder in this grant round, he does not make any grants to this grantee (Center for Applied Rationality). Jaan Tallinn's philanthropy goals as described in https://jaan.online/philanthropy/ set targets in terms of the total amount of endpoint grants, i.e., grants spent on actual grantees and not for regranting. It is not clear how grants to the Long-Term Future Fund are counted, but since the LTFF tends to spend most of its balance in its grant rounds, Tallinn likely expects that the bulk of the money will become endpoint grants short. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 7.10%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | AI Impacts | 82,000.00 | AI safety | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round. Grants to AI Impacts had been made in the second and third grant rounds. Other notes: The grant round also includes a grant from Jaan Tallinn ($221,000) to the same grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 33.74%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Centre for Enabling EA Learning & Research | 61,000.00 | Effective altruism/housing | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the first one with a grant to this grantee. Donor retrospective of the donation: The grant recommendation in the future grant round https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2022-h2-recommendations suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: The grant round includes a grant by Jed McCaleb ($21,000) to the same grantee (CEEALAR). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 0.64%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | Centre for Enabling EA Learning & Research | 21,000.00 | Effective altruism/housing | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the first one with a grant to this grantee. Other notes: The grant round includes a grant by Jaan Tallinn ($61,000) to the same grantee (CEEALAR). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 8.64%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Lightcone Infrastructure | 1,055,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the third one with a grant to this grantee. Donor retrospective of the donation: Followup grants in the next grant round https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations from both Jaan Tallinn and the Casey and Family Foundation, suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee, though the grant amounts ($380,000 and $500,000 respectively) total to less than this grant. Other notes: At the time, the grantee is known as LessWrong, and listed as such in the grants database. Although Jed McCaleb also participates in this grant round as a funder, he does not make any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 11.09%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Centre for the Study of Existential Risk | 145,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the third one with a grant to the grantee. Tallinn had also made a grant to the grantee directly (outside of the SFF's process) in 2020. Other notes: Although Jed McCaleb also participates in this grant round as a funder, he does not make any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.52%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Global Catastrophic Risk Institute | 48,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round; all previous grant rounds included grants to this grantee. Other notes: Although Jed McCaleb also participates in this grant round as a funder, he does not make any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 0.50%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Centre for Long-Term Resilience | 1,013,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the first with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: The SFF website lists the grantee as Alpenglow Group Limited; this is the business name of the Centre for Long-Term Resilience. Although Jed McCaleb also participates in this grant round as a funder, he does not make any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 10.65%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | New Science Research | 147,000.00 | Scientific research | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the first with a grant to this grantee. Other notes: Jed McCaleb, the other funder participating in the grant round, grants $51,000 to the grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.55%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | New Science Research | 51,000.00 | Scientific research | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the first with a grant to this grantee. Other notes: Jaan Tallinn, the other funder participating in the grant round, grants $147,000 to the grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 20.99%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Generation Pledge | 291,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the first with a grant to this grantee. Donor retrospective of the donation: For the 2021 H2 grants, Zvi Mowshowitz's blog post about the grantmaking process, though not naming Generation Pledge, talks about an applicant doing something similar to Generation Pledge, and his concerns about the applicant: "These seemed deeply terrible. If you think the best use of funds, in a world in which we already have billions available, is to go trying to convince others to give away their money in the future, and then hoping it can be steered to the right places [...]. My expectation is that these people are seeking money and power, largely for themselves, via attempting to hijack that of others, especially for the one targeting heirs [...] it looked like there was willingness [among other recommenders] to be what I would view as the villain in the play, but that the calculations said that for our purposes this type of strategy didn’t pay even if you discount such concerns, and so the strategy was not funded, whatever anyone would have chosen to call it." Other notes: Jed McCaleb, the other funder participating in the grant round, does not make any grant to the grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.06%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | AI Safety Support | 200,000.00 | AI safety | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the first with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: Although Jed McCaleb also participates as a funder in this grant round, he does not make any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.10%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Legal Priorities Project | 265,000.00 | Longtermism | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the first with a grant to this grantee. Other notes: Although Jed McCaleb also participates in this grant round as a funder, he does not make any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.79%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative | 14,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support the BERI-SERI collaboration, This is BERI's collaboration with the Stanford Existential Risk Initiative (SERI). See https://existence.org/collaborations/ for BERI's full list of collaborations. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the third with grants to the grantee. It is the first round with a grant specifically for this collaboration. Other notes: The grant round includes a grant from Jed McCaleb for another BERI collaboration (with FHI) and grants from Tallinn for collaborations with FHI, SERI, and CSER. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.76%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative | 17,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support the BERI-FHI collaboration, This is BERI's collaboration with the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI). See https://existence.org/collaborations/ for BERI's full list of collaborations. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the third with grants to the grantee. It is the first round with a grant specifically for this collaboration. Other notes: The grant round includes a grant from Jed McCaleb for another BERI collaboration (with SERI) and grants from Tallinn for collaborations with FHI, SERI, and CSER. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 7.00%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative | 37,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support the BERI-CSER collaboration, This is BERI's collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER). See https://existence.org/collaborations/ for BERI's full list of collaborations. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the third with grants to the grantee. It is the second round with a grant specifically for this collaboration. Other notes: The grant round includes grants from Tallinn for two other BERI collaborations (with FHI and SERI) as well as grants from Jed McCaleb for the collaborations with FHI and SERI. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 0.39%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Convergence Analysis | 103,000.00 | AI safety | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support "Convergence: Project AI Clarity" Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the second with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes a $13,000 grant to Convergence Analysis for Convergence. Although Jed McCaleb also participates as a funder in this grant round, he does not make any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 10.83%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Convergence Analysis | 13,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support "Convergence" Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the second with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes a $103,000 grant to Convergence Analysis for Convergence: Project AI Clarity. Although Jed McCaleb also participates as a funder in this grant round, he does not make any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.37%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative | 333,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support the BERI-SERI collaboration, This is BERI's collaboration with the Stanford Existential Risk Institute (SERI). See https://existence.org/collaborations/ for BERI's full list of collaborations. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the third with grants to the grantee. It is the first round with a grant specifically for this collaboration. Other notes: The grant round includes grants from Tallinn for two other BERI collaborations (with FHI and CSER) as well as grants from Jed McCaleb for the collaborations with FHI and SERI. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.50%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative | 478,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support the BERI-FHI collaboration, This is BERI's collaboration with the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI). See https://existence.org/collaborations/ for BERI's full list of collaborations. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round and the third with grants to the grantee. It is the first round with a grant specifically for this collaboration. Other notes: The grant round includes grants from Tallinn for two other BERI collaborations (with SERI and CSER) as well as grants from Jed McCaleb for the collaborations with FHI and SERI. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.02%. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Center for Applied Rationality | 212,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from Jed McCaleb ($23,000) and Jaan Tallinn ($19,000) to the same grantee (Center for Applied Rationality). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 32.62%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Global Catastrophic Risk Institute | 209,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round; each of the grant rounds has included grants to the grantee. Other notes: Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund and Jed McCaleb also participate as funders in this grant round as funders, neither of them makes any grants to this grantee. The grant is made via Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 12.83%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Center for Human-Compatible AI | 799,000.00 | AI safety | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amout recommended by the S-process is $779,000, but the actual grant amount is $799,000 ($20,000 higher). Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round and the first with grants to this grantee. Other notes: Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund and Jed McCaleb also participate in this grant round as funders, neither of them makes any grants to this grantee. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative | 247,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round and the second with grants to this grantee. Other notes: Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund and Jed McCaleb also participate in this grant round as funders, neither of them makes any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.74%. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Generation Pledge | 37,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendationsbased on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor retrospective of the donation: A followup grant https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations in 2021 H1 from Jaan Tallinn based on SFF's recommendation suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: Jaan Tallinn and Jed McCaleb also participate as funders in the grant round, but make no grants to the grantee. The grant is made via the Centre for Effective Altruism. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.69%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Median Group | 98,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round and the second with grants to this grantee. Other notes: Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund and Jed McCaleb also participate in this grant round as funders, neither of them makes any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.62%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Rethink Priorities | 57,000.00 | Cause prioritization | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round and the first with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund and Jed McCaleb also participate as funders in this grant round as funders, neither of them makes any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 0.21%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | 563,000.00 | AI safety | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." The recommended grant amount was $543,000 but the actual grant made was for $563,000. Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount recommended by the S-process is $543,0000, but the actual grant amount is $563,000 ($20,000 higher). Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round. Grants to MIRI had also been made in the third round (2020 H1). Other notes: Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund and Jed McCaleb also participate as donors in this round, neither of them makes a grant to MIRI. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Center for Applied Rationality | 39,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." The amount recommended by the S-process ($19,000) was less than the amount finally granted ($39,000). Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The S-process came with a recommendation for a grant amount of $19,000 but the amount finally granted was $39,000. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round. Grants to CFAR had been made in the first two grant rounds but not the third one. Donor retrospective of the donation: Continued grants in future grant rounds (such as https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations in 2021 H1) suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from the Survival and Flourishing Fund ($212,000) and Jed McCaleb ($23,000) to the same grantee (Center for Applied Rationality). |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Modeling Cooperation | 74,000.00 | AI safety | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round and the second with grants to this grantee. Other notes: Grant made via Convergence Analysis. Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund and Jed McCaleb also participate in this grant round as funders, neither of them makes any grants to this grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.74%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Future of Life Institute | 347,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round. Grants to the grantee had been made in the first and third grant round. Other notes: The grant round also includes a grant from the Survival and Flourishing Fund of $347,000 to the same grantee (FLI). Although Jed McCaleb also participates as a funder in the round, he does not make any grants to this grantee in this round. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 12.83%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | Center for Applied Rationality | 23,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round. Grants to CFAR had been made in the first two grant rounds but not the third one. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from the Survival and Flourishing Fund ($212,000) and Jaan Tallinn ($19,000) to the same grantee (Center for Applied Rationality). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 9.20%. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Future of Life Institute | 23,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round. Grants to the grantee had been made in the first and third grant round. Other notes: The grant round also includes a grant from Jaan Tallinn of $347,000 to the same grantee (FLI). Although Jed McCaleb also participates as a funder in the round, he does not make any grants to this grantee in this round. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.54%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Topos Institute | 151,000.00 | -- | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Conditional support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round and the second with grants to the grantee. Other notes: The support offered by the grant is conditional, as administered by Owen Cotton-Barratt. The entire grant amount does not appear to be granted in the donation logs at https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html -- only $78,000 appears to be granted on 2021-03-24. The grant round also includes a $144,000 grant from Jed McCaleb to Topos Institute. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.32%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | Topos Institute | 144,000.00 | -- | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Conditional support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fourth grant round and the second with grants to the grantee. Other notes: The support offered by the grant is conditional, as administered by Owen Cotton-Barratt. The grant round also includes a $151,000 grant from Jaan Tallinn to Topos Institute. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 57.60%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Center for Human-Compatible AI | 75,000.00 | AI safety | https://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%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | AI Impacts | 75,000.00 | AI safety | https://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. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Future of Life Institute | 30,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round; the grantee had also received a grant in the first round. Donor retrospective of the donation: Continued grants in future grant rounds such as https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations (2020 H2) suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from the Survival and Flourishing Fund ($100,000) and Jed McCaleb ($10,000) to the same grantee (FLI). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.26%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute | 60,000.00 | -- | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round and the first with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from the Survival and Flourishing Fund ($120,000) and Jed McCaleb ($20,000) to the same grantee (QURI). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 6.52%. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute | 120,000.00 | -- | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round and the first with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from Jaan Tallinn ($60,000) and Jed McCaleb ($20,000) to the same grantee (QURI). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 15.38%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Convergence Analysis | 10,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round and the first with a grant to the grantee. However, a previous grant to Modeling Cooperation had been made via the grantee (Convergence Analysis). Other notes: Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund and Jed McCaleb also participate as funders in this grant round, neither of them makes a grant to the grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.09%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Leverage Research | 80,000.00 | -- | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round and the first with a (publicly documented) grant to the grantee; however, Jaan Tallinn made grants to the grantee in 2019. Other notes: Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund and Jed McCaleb also participate as funders in this grant round, neither of them makes a grant to the grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 8.66%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | 80,000 Hours | 30,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth/career counseling | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's third round. SFF made a grant to 80,000 Hours in the previous two rounds as well Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from Survival and Flourishing Fund ($120,000) and Jed McCaleb ($30,000) to the same grantee (80,000 Hours). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.26%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | AI Impacts | 40,000.00 | AI safety | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round; grants to AI Impacts had also been made in the second round in 2019 Q4. Other notes: The grant round also includes a grant from Jed McCaleb ($20,000) to the same grantee (AI Impacts). Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund also participates as a funder in the round, it had no direct grants to AI Impacts in the round. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.35%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Lightcone Infrastructure | 110,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round; the grantee had also received a grant in the first round. Donor retrospective of the donation: A further grant of a much larger amount ($1,055,000) as part of a later grant round https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations (2021 H1) suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: At the time, the grantee is known as LessWrong, and listed as such in the grants database. The grant round also includes grants from the Survival and Flourishing Fund ($290,000) and Jed McCaleb ($30,000) to the grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 11.96%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | 280,000.00 | AI safety | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round and the first with grants to MIRI. Donor retrospective of the donation: A further grant from Jaan Tallinn to MIRI (see https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations in 2020 H2) suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from the Survival and Flourishing Fund ($20,000) and Jed McCaleb ($40,000) to the same grantee (MIRI). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 30.43%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative | 20,000.00 | Gobal catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support the BERI-CSER collaboration, This is BERI's collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER). See https://existence.org/collaborations/ for BERI's full list of collaborations. Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders in the grant round, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff#AI_Safety_Paper_Production (GW, IR) "I consider AI Safety and related existential risks to be by far the most important ‘cause area,’ that’s even more true given the focus of SFF, and I am confident Jaan feels the same way. [...] It’s hard to find things that might possibly work in the AI Safety space, as opposed to plans to look around for something that might possibly work. [...] CHAI@BERI also seemed clearly worthwhile, and they got a large grant as well." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round and the first with a grant to BERI. Other notes: Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund and Jed McCaleb also participate as funders in this grant round, neither of them makes a grant to the grantee. SFF itself is a descendant of BERI's now-ended grantmaking, which is distinct from BERI's academic collaboration work that is still ongoing and being funded by this grant. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.18%. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | 80,000 Hours | 120,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth/career counseling | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's third round. SFF made a grant to 80,000 Hours in the previous two rounds as well. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from Jaan Tallinn ($30,000) and Jed McCaleb ($30,000) to the same grantee (80,000 Hours). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 18.46%. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | 20,000.00 | AI safety | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round and the first with grants to MIRI. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from Jaan Tallinn ($280,000) and Jed McCaleb ($40,000) to the same grantee (MIRI). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.07%. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Lightcone Infrastructure | 290,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round; the grantee had also received a grant in the first round. Other notes: At the time, the grantee is known as LessWrong, and listed as such in the grants database. The grant round also includes grants from Jaan Tallinn ($110,000) and Jed McCaleb ($30,000) to the grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 44.61%. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Future of Life Institute | 100,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round; the grantee had also received a grant in the first round. Donor retrospective of the donation: Continued grants in future grant rounds such as https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations (2020 H2) suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from Jaan Tallinn ($30,000) and Jed McCaleb ($10,000) to the same grantee (FLI). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 15.38%. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Global Catastrophic Risk Institute | 90,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round; the grantee had also received grants in the first two rounds but from SFF (not from Tallinn). Other notes: The grant round also includes a grant from Jed McCaleb of $50,000. The Survival and Flourishing Fund also participates as a funder in this round but does not make a grant to the grantee. The grant is made via Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 9.78%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | 80,000 Hours | 100,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth/career counseling | https://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%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | 100,000.00 | AI safety | https://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%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | 80,000 Hours | 30,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth/career counseling | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's third round. SFF made a grant to 80,000 Hours in the previous two rounds as well. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from Survival and Flourishing Fund ($120,000) and Jed McCaleb ($30,000) to the same grantee (80,000 Hours). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 12.00%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | AI Impacts | 20,000.00 | AI safety | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round; grants to AI Impacts had also been made in the second round in 2019 Q4. Other notes: The grant round also includes a grant from Jaan Tallinn ($40,000) to the same grantee (AI Impacts). Although the Survival and Flourishing Fund also participates as a funder in the round, it has no direct grants to AI Impacts. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 8.00%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | 40,000.00 | AI safety | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round and the first with grants to MIRI. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from the Survival and Flourishing Fund ($20,000) and Jaan Tallinn ($280,000) to the same grantee (MIRI). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 16.00%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | Lightcone Infrastructure | 30,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round; the grantee had also received a grant in the first round. Other notes: At the time, the grantee is known as LessWrong, and listed as such in the grants database. The grant round also includes grants from the Survival and Flourishing Fund ($290,000) and Jaan Tallinn ($110,000) to the grantee. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 12.00%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | Future of Life Institute | 10,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round; the grantee had also received a grant in the first round. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from the Survival and Flourishing Fund ($100,000) and Jaan Tallinn ($30,000) to the same grantee (FLI). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.00%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | Global Catastrophic Risk Institute | 50,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round; the grantee had also received grants in the first two rounds but from SFF (not from McCaleb, who did not participate in either round). Other notes: The grant round also includes a grant from Jaan Tallinn of $90,000. The Survival and Flourishing Fund also participates as a funder in this round but does not make a grant to the grantee. The grant is made via Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 20.00%. |
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| Jed McCaleb | Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute | 20,000.00 | -- | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2020 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process). A request for grants was made at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wQk3nrGTJZHfsPHb6/survival-and-flourishing-grant-applications-open-until-march (GW, IR) and open till 2020-03-07. The S-process "involves allowing the recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn, Jed McCaleb, and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this 2020 H1 round of grants is SFF's third round and the first with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes grants from the Survival and Flourishing Fund ($120,000) and Jaan Tallinn ($60,000) to the same grantee (QURI). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 8.00%. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Median Group | 50,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round and the first with grants to the grantee. Other notes: Jaan Tallinn makes a $120,000 grant to Median Group in this grant round. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.43%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Median Group | 120,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round and the first with grants to the grantee. Other notes: This grant is made via the Median Foundation. The Survival and Flourishing Fund makes a $50,000 grant to Median Group in this grant round. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 11.01%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Topos Institute | 150,000.00 | -- | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round. Donor retrospective of the donation: Grants in several future grant rounds suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 13.76%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Centre for the Study of Existential Risk | 20,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round. Donor retrospective of the donation: The future grant https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations (2021 H1) suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes a grant from the Survival and Flourishing Fund of $40,000 to the same grantee (CSER). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.83%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | 80,000 Hours | 70,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth/career counseling | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round and the first one with grants made directly by Jaan Tallinn. SFF made a grant to 80,000 Hours in the previous round as well. Donor retrospective of the donation: Continued grants in future grant rounds (such as https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations in 2020 H1) suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes a $40,000 grant directly from the Survival and Flourishing Fund to the same grantee (80,000 Hours). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 6.42%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Centre for the Study of Existential Risk | 50,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round. Other notes: Grant made via Cambridge in America. The grant round also includes a grant from Jaan Tallinn of $20,000 to the same grantee (CSER). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.59%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Modeling Cooperation | 50,000.00 | AI safety | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round and the first with grants to the grantee. Other notes: Grant made via Convergence Analysis. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.43%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | 80,000 Hours | 40,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth/career counseling | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: This represents a renewal of a larger grant made by SFF of $280,000 in its previous funding round (2019 Q3). Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round. SFF made a grant to 80,000 Hours in the previous round as well. Donor retrospective of the donation: Continued grants in future grant rounds (such as https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations in 2020 H1) suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes a $70,000 grant from Jaan Tallinn to the same grantee (80,000 Hours). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.35%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Center for Applied Rationality | 150,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round. SFF made a grant to CFAR in the previous round as well. Other notes: The grant round also includes a $50,000 grant from Jaan Tallinn to the same grantee (Center for Applied Rationality). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 16.30%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Global Catastrophic Risk Institute | 30,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round. A grant had also been made in the first grant round. Other notes: Jaan Tallinn also participates as a funder in this grant round, but makes no grants to the grantee in this grant round. The grant is made via Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.76%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters | 10,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round and the first with a grant to the grantee. BERI had previously granted money to the grantee. Other notes: Jaan Tallinn also participates as a funder in this grant round, but makes no grants to the grantee in this grant round. The grant is made via Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.09%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Ought | 100,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round and the first with a grant to the grantee. Donor retrospective of the donation: In 2021 H2, Jaan Tallinn would make a grant to Ought based on the SFF's S-process. Other notes: Jaan Tallinn also participates as a funder in this grant round, but makes no grants to the grantee in this grant round. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 10.87%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Charter Cities Institute | 60,000.00 | Alternate governance/charter cities | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round and the first with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: Jaan Tallinn also participates as a funder in this grant round, but makes no grants to the grantee in this grant round. The grant is made via the Center for Innovative Governance Research. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.09%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | Center for Applied Rationality | 50,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round and the first one with grants made directly by Jaan Tallinn. SFF made a grant to CFAR in the previous round as well. Donor retrospective of the donation: Continued grants in future grant rounds (such as https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h2-recommendations in 2020 H2) suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes a $150,000 grant from the Survival and Flourishing Fund to the same grantee (Center for Applied Rationality). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.59%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Survival and Flourishing Fund | AI Impacts | 70,000.00 | AI safety/strategy | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round. Other notes: The grant round also includes a grant from Jaan Tallinn ($30,000) to the same grantee (AI Impacts). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 7.61%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Jaan Tallinn | AI Impacts | 30,000.00 | AI safety | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2019 Q4 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Funders were free to assign different weights to different Recommenders in the process; the weights were determined by marginal utility functions specified by the funders (Jaan Tallinn and SFF). In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this November 2019 round of grants is SFF's second round. Donor retrospective of the donation: Continued grants (such as https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2020-h1-recommendations in 2020 H1) suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: The grant round also includes a grant from the Survival and Flourishing Fund ($70,000) to the same grantee (AI Impacts). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.76%; announced: 2019-12-15. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | AI Safety Camp | 29,000.00 | AI safety/technical research/talent pipeline | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | AI Safety Camp | 41,000.00 | AI safety/technical research/talent pipeline | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | High Impact Policy Engine | 60,000.00 | Effective altruism/government policy | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Stag Lynn | 23,000.00 | AI safety/upskilling | https://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 |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Roam Research | 10,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://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%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel | 30,000.00 | AI safety | https://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 |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Alexander Siegenfeld | 20,000.00 | AI safety/deconfusion research | https://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%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | 80,000 Hours | 200,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth/career counseling | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK | Donation process: Part of the July 2019 EA Meta Fund grants round. The grant page says: "7 of the 9 grantees in this round applied through this process." However, it is not clear if 80,000 Hours submitted an application, it may well be one of the two grantees that did not. It also seems that 80,000 Hours is considered as a grantee in each grant round; it received grants in all three previous grant rounds Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: 80,000 Hours plans to hirre 5 full-time equivalents (FTE) over 2019 and anothe 5 over 2020. The additional funding gives them the budget needed to pay for these hires Donor reason for selecting the donee: Donor believes 80,000 Hours is one of the highest impact-per-dollar meta organizations, for reasons similar to those explained in previous grant rounds https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW (November 2018) and https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b (March 2019) Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount is similar to amounts granted in previous grant rounds; it is probably at the larger end of the amount the Meta Fund feels comfortable granting to a single organization in one grant round (the total amount granted in the grant round if $466,000, so this amount is around 43% of that total). Also, the amount ($200,000) fills half the funding shortfall of 80,000 Hours from the 2018 fundraiser (of $400,000) Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 42.90% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The EA Meta Fund team is excited to see 80,000 Hours expand headcount and operations. Currently, the expansion is bottlenecked on money: "Right now, they cannot fully commit to hiring in 2020 as their expansion budget has not been filled. Ideally, they would already be searching for those hires, so they are being somewhat slowed down by their lack of funding." |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Rethink Priorities | 12,000.00 | Cause prioritization | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK | Donation process: Part of the July 2019 EA Meta Fund grants round. The grant page says: "7 of the 9 grantees in this round applied through this process." From the description, it appears that Rethink Priorities is one of the 7 grantees who applied Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant covers two projects: (1) geopolitical implications of climate change on mass migration (2) cost-effectiveness of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page references the March 2019 grant https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b and says: "we believe the reasons behind this grant still stand." Further: "We noted in the previous round that we expect there is particular value in Rethink Priorities undertaking commissioned research into areas that are neglected by other researchers. In this round, Rethink Priorities applied for funding to support two specific research projects, both of which were suggested by researchers at other high-impact organizations, and require collaboration with those researchers. We view this as an indication that these projects will provide value." Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely based on amount requested by donee and needed for the two projects Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.70% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round, also by the readiness of these projects to be funded |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Effective Thesis | 10,000.00 | Effective altruism/research guidance | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK | Donation process: Part of the July 2019 EA Meta Fund grants round. The grant page says: "7 of the 9 grantees in this round applied through this process." It is not clear whether Effective Thesis is one of the 7 that applied Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: The grant page says: "Effective Thesis advises students on choosing an impactful research topic for their thesis by connecting them with experienced researchers." Further: "Providing students with thesis topic advice requires a small level of input from an experienced researcher, usually 1-3 hours per student." And: "Effective Thesis has a network of 44 coaches with the capacity to take on at least 2x as many students as they help now." Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "Since September 2018, Effective Thesis has received over 200 applications from students who want help with figuring out their thesis topic and provided 60 students with coaching. We share their expectation that a small number of cases likely account for the majority of the project's impact. The best cases so far appear to have been cases where students - who already planned to become researchers in the long-term - substantially changed their focus to higher-impact topics primarily because of their work with Effective Thesis." 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: 2.15%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Effective Altruism Community Building Grants | 120,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK | Donation process: Part of the July 2019 EA Meta Fund grants round. The grant page says: "7 of the 9 grantees in this round applied through this process." However, it is not clear if Effective Altruism Community Building Grants submitted an application, it may well be one of the two grantees that did not. Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: The money will add to the pot of money available to Effective Altruism Community Building Grants to disburse Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "This is an early-stage grant; we expect the experimental value to be greater than the direct impact of the grant." Specifically, community building grants seem impotant, and the EA Meta Fund committee believes that decisions on how to allocate community building grants are best handled by the Effective Altruism Community Building Grants. Also: "While the program is relatively new, having been launched 18 months ago, the team has carried out some initial impact assessment; so far, the results seem to be positive." Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount is likely chosen keeping in mind the "early-stage grant" nature Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 26.90% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round, as well as relative maturity of EA CBG and completion of its initial impact assessment Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: The grant page says: "In the future, if we continue to support EA CBG, we plan to dig deeper into their individual grant outcomes and to further discuss the evaluation process and evidence of impact with the CBG team." Other notes: The grant page says: "As part of our decision to write this grant, we have referred all our highest-potential community building grants to EA CBG.". |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | High Impact Policy Engine | 40,000.00 | Effective altruism/government policy | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK | Donation process: Part of the July 2019 EA Meta Fund grants round. The grant page says: "7 of the 9 grantees in this round applied through this process." It is not clear whether HIPE is one of the 7 that applied Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support HIPE in its fundraising efforts to cover salary and travel costs for one full-time employee for 2 years in the UK government. Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "If HIPE can demonstrate value to the UK government department (e.g., through improving policy-making, staff wellbeing, or staff retention), HIPE believes they would have a reasonably strong chance of being made a permanent project fully funded by the government." Further: "This grant is made experimentally, largely on the promise of the idea and the reputation of the two founding volunteers." Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Amount less than, but contributing a nontrivial fraction to, the two-year salary and travel costs for one full-time employee that it is for. At around the same time, the Long Term Future Fund grants $60,000 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: 8.58% 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 grant page says: "Any further funding will be sensitive to the strength of their team in the future." Other notes: Affected countries: United Kingdom. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Generation Pledge | 30,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK | Donation process: Part of the July 2019 EA Meta Fund grants round. The grant page says: "7 of the 9 grantees in this round applied through this process." It is not clear whether Generation Pledge is one of the 7 that applied Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: The grant page says: "Generation Pledge mirrors the Founders Pledge model, but working with next gens rather than founders. The world's ultra high net worth families collectively own $31.5 trillion. Several thousand next gens will inherit this wealth. Generation Pledge aims to support those next gens to maximise their social impact." Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "[I]n the past few months they have grown their pledger community significantly. They have an expected pledge value of over $300 million, with a number of sensible discount factors applied. We think that these positive updates are enough to justify Generation Pledge being funded through to a later stage, where they will have the opportunity to prove they can turn these pledges into donations to effective charities." Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The grant page says: "This grant will contribute towards Generation Pledge's immediate funding gap for 2019, giving them more runway to fundraise and further grow their pledger base." Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 6.44% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round, as well as by the progress made by Generation Pledge in getting $300 million pledged Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: The grant page talks of a "later stage, where they will have the opportunity to prove they can turn these pledges into donations to effective charities." It is likely that Generation Pledge will be considered for further grants if it is able to turn donations to pledges |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | EA Coaching | 23,000.00 | Effective altruism/personal coaching | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK | Donation process: Part of the July 2019 EA Meta Fund grants round. The grant page says: "7 of the 9 grantees in this round applied through this process." It is not clear whether EA Coaching is one of the 7 that applied Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: Grantee is a productivity coaching organization, currently with just one person, Lynette Bye. The grant page says: "This grant will allow Lynette to offer coaching calls to people working at high-impact organizations at a highly subsidized rate, offer free coaching for select referrals from 80,000 Hours, and hire contractors to help create materials to scale her coaching." Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant based on Lynette's impact evaluation https://effectivealtruismcoaching.com/results The grant page says: "Given the early-stage nature of her project, we found the results fairly compelling. A number of her clients working at high-impact organizations have reported significant increases in their hours of productive work." Also: "Lynette focuses on clients working in AI alignment and at high-impact "meta" organizations. She has previously worked with employees at FHI, the Open Philanthropy Project, CEA, CHAI, MIRI, DeepMind, and the Forethought Foundation, and she expects to continue to do so. Given that these organizations focus on particularly high-impact areas, we expect that increasing their productivity should be very valuable. 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: 4.93%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Rethink Charity | 15,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK | Donation process: Part of the July 2019 EA Meta Fund grants round. The grant page says: "7 of the 9 grantees in this round applied through this process." It is not clear whether Rethink Charity is one of the 7 that applied Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to design and run an updated version ofthe EA Survey in 2019. The grant page says: "Rethink has been collaborating with CEA and other meta organizations to gather input on the 2019 survey. Like last year, Rethink will release anonymized data and summary survey output." There is an accompanying $5,000 grant to CEA, which will use the funding to pay Rethink for "bespoke analysis of the results." Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "[I]it is valuable to generate more empirical data to inform movement-building strategy. In particular, we are aware that some high-impact organizations consistently collaborate with the researchers who analyze the survey, in order to inform their organizational and community-building strategies. [...] Maintaining a sufficiently large survey and in-depth analysis seems like one of the better methods to generate data and insights [about the broad effective altruism movement]." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. Also, the grant page says: "We think part of the benefit of the survey is ensuring data that is collected on a regular basis to allow for consistent year-on-year comparisons. Funding at this stage will allow the survey and analysis to be carried out this year in line with the annual publishing cycle." Intended funding timeframe in months: 12 Other notes: Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.22%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Centre for Effective Altruism | 5,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK | Donation process: Part of the July 2019 EA Meta Fund grants round. The grant page says: "7 of the 9 grantees in this round applied through this process." CEA is not a direct grantee, but an intermediary for part of a grant; it did not apply in this application process Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant for CEA to use to pay Rethink Charity for "bespoke analysis of the results" of the 2019 EA Survey. This accompanies a separate $15,000 grant to Rethink Charity for the 2019 EA Survey. Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "This financial structure is meant to ensure that a significant fraction of Rethink's analysis will be directly relevant to what CEA is looking to learn from the survey." Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount of $5,000, compared to $15,000 directly granted to Rethink Charity to conduct the survey, probably reflects the nature of power balance that the Meta Fund managers want to engineer between CEA and Rethink Charity, in terms of the extent to which they control the priorities of the EA Survey Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.07% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. Also, the grant page says: "We think part of the benefit of the survey is ensuring data that is collected on a regular basis to allow for consistent year-on-year comparisons. Funding at this stage will allow the survey and analysis to be carried out this year in line with the annual publishing cycle." Intended funding timeframe in months: 12 |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | RC Forward | 11,000.00 | Effective altruism/fundraising | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK | Donation process: Part of the July 2019 EA Meta Fund grants round. The grant page says: "7 of the 9 grantees in this round applied through this process." It is not clear whether RC Forward is one of the 7 that applied Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: Grantee, RC Forward, is a subsidiary of Rethink Charity that specializes in helping donors in Canada make tax-deductible donations. In 2018, it moved $3.3 million to 25 effective charities with just $50,000 in operational expenses Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "RC Forward still looks to be a relatively strong donation opportunity even when applying the most pessimistic estimates. In 2018, RC Forward is expected to have moved at least $3 for every $1 spent." Also: "Even if only 2% of the total money moved through the platform last year was directly caused by RC Forward, they would beat the break-even point." Further: "Although any potential scale-up is limited to the Canadian market, the platform could process many more donations within that market without a proportional rise in costs." It also links to RC Forward's own analysis at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/n2Y7z5wvjTuNn5TYg/cost-effectiveness-of-rc-forward (GW, IR) Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The grant page says: "This grant will fill RC Forward's immediate remaining funding gap for 2019." Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.36% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round, and by RC Forward getting close to Giving Season 2019 |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Robert Miles | 39,000.00 | AI safety/content creation/video | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | 50,000.00 | AI safety | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Center for Applied Rationality | 150,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | AI Safety Camp | 25,000.00 | AI safety/technical research/talent pipeline | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Ought | 50,000.00 | AI safety | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Foretold | 70,000.00 | Epistemic institutions/forecasting | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Alexander Turner | 30,000.00 | AI safety/agent foundations | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Effective Altruism Zürich | 17,900.00 | AI safety | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Tessa Alexanian | 26,250.00 | Biosecurity and pandemic preparedness | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Shahar Avin | 40,000.00 | AI safety | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Lucius Caviola | 50,000.00 | Effective altruism/long-termism | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Nikhil Kunapuli | 30,000.00 | AI safety/deconfusion research | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Anand Srinivasan | 30,000.00 | AI safety/deconfusion research | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Effective Altruism Russia | 28,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | David Girardo | 30,000.00 | AI safety/deconfusion research | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Tegan McCaslin | 30,000.00 | AI safety/forecasting | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Metaculus | 70,000.00 | Epistemic institutions/forecasting | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Jacob Lagerros | 27,000.00 | AI safety/forecasting | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Orpheus Lummis | 10,000.00 | AI safety/upskilling | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Lauren Lee | 20,000.00 | Rationality community | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Kocherga | 50,000.00 | Rationality community | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Connor Flexman | 20,000.00 | AI safety/forecasting | https://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. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Eli Tyre | 30,000.00 | Epistemic institutions | https://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). |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Lucius Caviola | 80,000.00 | Effective altruism/talent pipeline | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b | Reasons for grant: (1) Lucius Caviola is a well-respected PhD-level academic, with a focus on effective altruism and long-termism, (2) Lucius has been accepted to work for two years as a postdoc researcher in psychology with the highly renowned professor Joshua Greene at Harvard University, on the condition that he can bring his own research funding, (3) Donor believes that very high-quality academic research is a highly impactful activity in expectation, (4) Psychology at the higher levels has been very influential, (5) Donor believes that where foundational researchers focusing on effective altruism have displayed excellence, they should not be bottlenecked on funding considerations wherever possible, (6) This is a time-bounded, specific opportunity that requires funding to initiate and explore, and donor believes both that the value of information from this speculative grant is high, and that the project could have a large potential upside through increasing the quality and quantity of information available to address the world’s biggest problems. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 15.63%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research | 64,000.00 | Cause prioritization | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b | Donor believes that academic research is a high-impact but high-investment way to expand the frontiers of discussion and explore complex, nuanced topics. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 12.50%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Effective Altruism Norway | 18,000.00 | Effective altruism/talent pipeline | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b | Grant to run an Operations Camp in Oslo, with the aim of upskilling promising talent and providing opportunities to test fit in key operations roles. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.52%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Effective Altruism Geneva | 18,000.00 | Cause prioritization | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b | Grant to run a policy research project to determine what prioritization models are appropriate to run under what circumstances. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.52%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Effective Altruism Netherlands | 17,000.00 | Effective altruism/fundraising | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b | Grant to help 35 charities that are either GiveWell-recommended or have received grants from the Open Philanthropy Project to achieve tax-deductible status in the Netherlands. Affected countries: Netherlands; Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.32%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | One for the World | 15,000.00 | Effective altruism/fundraising | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b | Grant to support the creation and growth of chapters at undergraduate, MBA and law schools. Chapter leaders and student ambassadors encourage their classmates to commit to donating a percentage of their income upon graduation. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 2.93%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | The Life You Can Save | 10,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b | Grant to support the tenth anniversary relaunch of Peter Singer's book The Life You Can Save; grantee is the eponymous organization. Project has an immediate, one-off funding requirement and donor believes it has high upside, judging from the impact that the original book had. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.95%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | 80,000 Hours | 170,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth/career counseling | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b | Donation process: This is part of the March 2019 grant round from the EA Meta Fund, comprising "a mixture of larger grants to more established meta groups and smaller grants to fund both younger organizations and specific projects." The grant to 80,000 Hours is among the "larger grants to more established meta groups" Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: Reasons for grant: (1) High impact per dollar, (2) Highly impactful and cost-effective in the past, for same reasons as discussed in https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW (previous grant), (3) Undergoing significant growth, (4) Not yet filled funding gap, (5) Big potential upside is reducing talent bottlenecks in cause areas that are crucial and highly technically challenging. Other than (5), all the other reasons are shared as stated with another simultaneous grant made to Founders Pledge Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing largely determined by timing of the grant round. Also, it is relevant that 80,000 Hours has not yet filled its funding gap Donor retrospective of the donation: The following $200,000 grant in the July 2019 grant round https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK suggests that this grant would be considered a success Other notes: Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 33.20%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Founders Pledge | 110,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b | Donation process: This is part of the March 2019 grant round from the EA Meta Fund, comprising "a mixture of larger grants to more established meta groups and smaller grants to fund both younger organizations and specific projects." The grant to Founders Pledge is among the "larger grants to more established meta groups" Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Donor reason for selecting the donee: Reasons for grant: (1) High impact per dollar, (2) Highly impactful and cost-effective in the past, for same reasons as discussed in https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW (previous grant), (3) Undergoing significant growth, (4) Not yet filled funding gap, (5) Big potential upside is long-lasting positive effect on the culture of smart major philanthropy. Other than (5), all the other reasons are shared as stated with another simultaneous grant made to 80,000 Hours Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. Also relevant is the high room for more funding of the organization Other notes: Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 21.48%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Rethink Priorities | 10,000.00 | Cause prioritization/Animal welfare | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b | Donation process: This is part of the March 2019 grant round from the EA Meta Fund, comprising "a mixture of larger grants to more established meta groups and smaller grants to fund both younger organizations and specific projects." The grant to 80,000 Hours falls under "younger organizations" Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: The grant page says: "They [Rethink Priorities] intend to continue their focus on animal welfare research in 2019, and cover other areas such as improving mental health, strengthening the EA movement, reducing catastrophic risks, and improving the long-term future." Donor reason for selecting the donee: Donor lists these reasons on the grant page: (1) Well-executed cause prioritisation research is very valuable. (2) Neutral-to-positive impression of published research by Rethink Priorities (RP). (3) Positive impression of adaptiveness and responsiveness to feedback of RP. (4) Exploratoryr value to encourage fund managers and others to investigate RP work. (5) Positive impression of RP's idea of "undertaking commissioned research into neglected areas, where there is a specific need for independent evaluation." (6) Potential for RP to "act as a talent pipeline and provide valuable training, especially as future capacity for EA philanthropic advisory." (7) Unfilled funding gap of $120k for 2019 Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount is much less than the funding gap of $120,000 for 2019. It is likely selected to be this small based on the experimental nature of the grant Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.95% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round, as well as grantee's trajectory (it has only recently started publishing research) Donor retrospective of the donation: The donor would make a followup grant of $12,000 in the July 2019 grant round, and continue to stand by the reasoning motivating the first grant |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Centre for Effective Altruism | 15,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW | Grant write-up talks of the strong track record of the CEA and their success at introducing EA concepts to a large number of people. The write-up concludes: "CEA is aiming to raise $3 million for their 2019 budget, and currently has significant room for more funding due to expansion efforts. At the margin, this grant is expected to contribute towards CEA’s expansion of their events, technology and community health teams.". Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 11.63%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Global Priorities Institute | 14,000.00 | Cause prioritization | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW | Grant write-up notes that donee (Global Priorities Institute) is solving an important problem of spreading EA-style ideas in the academic and policy worlds, and has shown impressive progress in its first year. The write-up concludes: "This grant is expected to contribute to GPI’s plans to grow its research team, particularly in economics, in order to publish a strong initial body of papers that defines their research focus. GPI also plans to sponsor DPhil students engaging in global priorities research at the University of Oxford through scholarships and prizes, and to give close support to early career academics with its summer visiting program.". Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 10.85%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Charity Entrepreneurship | 14,000.00 | Charity incubation | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW | Grant to support the incubation of new charities, which the donor believes to be highly valuable. The write-up concludes: "Marginal donations will allow Charity Entrepreneurship to expand the number of applicants they can accept to the program and give larger seed grants. The latter is likely to increase both the number of people applying and the level of stability at which the new charities start off, allowing them to focus more on long-term impact rather than short-term fundraising.". Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 10.85%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Raising for Effective Giving | 10,000.00 | Effective altruism/meta/fiundraising | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW | Grant write-up talks of the huge fundraising multiplier of the donee (which is a fundraising organization) as well as its significant growth in recent years. The donor was also impressed by the KPI tracking and estimation of the donee, as well as their directing significant funds to organizations focused on the long-term future. The write-up concludes by saying that the donee "will use this grant to expand their HNW advisory work in 2019. At the margin, this funding will likely enable them to build their research capacity and provide more effective advice to their HNW audience. This will allow them to better target their fundraising for effective organisations.". Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 7.75%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Let's Fund | 10,000.00 | Effective altruism | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW | Grant write-up notes that both the idea and the team are potentially promisingm and the quality of initial work is good. It concludes: "Let’s Fund will use additional capital to increase their fundraising ratio through careful outreach and marketing. In the future, they aim to undertake more and better research, especially into global catastrophic risk reduction, and have it evaluated and peer-reviewed by other researchers.". Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 7.75%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Berkeley REACH | 5,000.00 | Rationality community | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW | Grant is to provide funds to support the panel for dispute resolution, as the donor "would like the panel to succeed in becoming a trusted resource for the local community, and want to ensure they have the capacity to engage in training or seek professional advice where this could be useful." The grant write-up concludes: "This grant will provide the panel with readily available funding in the event that they wish to seek legal counsel, the services of an independent investigator, or other professional support, particularly if they are faced with a time-sensitive matter.". Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.88%. | |
| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | 80,000 Hours | 45,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth/career counseling | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW | Donation process: Part of the November 2018 grant round from the EA Meta Fund. This is among the "larger grants" of the "mixture of larger grants to more established meta groups and smaller grants to younger organizations" that comprise the grant round. The grant page says: "We see this as our pilot round and hope this set of grants will signal the type of organizations to which the EA Meta Fund plans to donate." Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: Although the funding is unrestricted, the grant page says: "At the margin, this grant is expected to contribute towards the budget for their expanded team." It also says: "We think it’s likely that the Open Philanthropy Project will renew their funding of 80,000 Hours this year (although this isn’t confirmed), but their grant will be capped at 50-66% of the total amount raised. Because of this, there is a gap for other donors to fill, who will effectively receive 1:1 or 1:2 matching funding." Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page lists 10 reasons: (1) Grantee has been impressive over the years. (2) Rapid growth of grantee since 2014. (3) Much larger budget for 2019 to support team expansion in 2019 and 2020. (4) Important work (supporting skilled people to pursue high-impact careers). (5) Carefully measured KPI to track their impact: impact-adjusted significant plan changes (IASPCs). (6) New focus on the highset priority career paths. (7) Excellent regular supporter updates (12 so far in 2018). (8) Great explanatory and advisory content that is helping people discover effective altruism. (9) Success at hiring and building a management team in 2018. (10) Marginal grants will go toward a new hire, which is particularly high-impact. Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The total of $129,000 being distributed in this grant round from the EA Meta Fund is being distributed using a "mixture of larger grants to more established meta groups and smaller grants to younger organizations. For the more established groups, we believe there is strong evidence of their past impact and cost-effectiveness, room for more funding, and high probability that they will have an even greater positive impact in the future." 80,000 Hours receives the single largest grant, and a little over 1/3 of the total money Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 34.88% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of the grant round. Also, the timing is particularly good for 80,000 Hours because of the historically large fundraising round 80,000 Hours has for 2019 Donor retrospective of the donation: Further grants in the next two grant rounds https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b and https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK suggest that this grant would be considered a success |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund | Founders Pledge | 16,000.00 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW | Donation process: Part of the November 2018 grant round from the EA Meta Fund. This is among the "larger grants" of the "mixture of larger grants to more established meta groups and smaller grants to younger organizations" that comprise the grant round. The grant page says: "We see this as our pilot round and hope this set of grants will signal the type of organizations to which the EA Meta Fund plans to donate." Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: The grant page says: "This grant will support their 2019 plans to expand their US operations and further develop their methodology to evaluate and support high-impact interventions." Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page lists 8 reasons: (1) Success at raising pledges; it has raised $630 million in pledges since 2013. (2) Moved $1.7 million to EA priority cause areas in the past 3 years. (3) Multipliers remain highly attractive after adjustments. (4) Founders Pledge engages with pledgers on how to best do good, and organizes events. This community-building work has additional unmeasured value. (5) Founders Pledge has been growing quickly and consistently: the value of new pledges in 2017 was double the value of pledges in 2015. (7) Founders Pledge has significant room for more funding due to international expansion plans for 2019. Recent growth in the United States has been responsible for about 30% of their total pledge value to date. (8) "We believe there is additional value in Founders Pledge expediting their international expansion, given potential competitive pressures and network effects." Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The total of $129,000 being distributed in this grant round from the EA Meta Fund is being distributed using a "mixture of larger grants to more established meta groups and smaller grants to younger organizations. For the more established groups, we believe there is strong evidence of their past impact and cost-effectiveness, room for more funding, and high probability that they will have an even greater positive impact in the future." Founders Pledge receives the second largest grant, and about 1/8 of the total grant money Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 12.40% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of the grant round Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup $110,000 grant https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/1hVfcvrzRbpXUWYht4bu3b in the March 2019 grant round suggests that this grant would be considered a success |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | 40,000.00 | AI safety | https://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%. |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Ought | 10,000.00 | AI safety | https://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 |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | Foretold | 20,000.00 | Epistemic institutions/forecasting | https://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 |
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| Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund | AI summer school | 21,000.00 | AI safety | https://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 Fund | AI Safety Unconference | 4,500.00 | AI safety | https://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 Philanthropy | Center for a New American Security | 260,000.00 | Global catastrophic risks | https://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 Philanthropy | UCLA School of Law | 1,536,222.00 | AI safety | https://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. |
Graph of spending by donee and year (incremental, not cumulative)
Graph of spending by donee and year (cumulative)
Graph of spending by donee and year (incremental, not cumulative)
Graph of spending by donee and year (cumulative)
