I do not think I am as pessimistic as drcode about the work that I see the SIAI doing. At first, it did strike me as similar to the televangelist, but then I began thinking that all of the works on the SIAI projects list could very well influence people who are going to be doing the hard work of putting code to machine (Hopefully, as I will be doing eventually).

I think it was Soulless Automaton below who suggested that the SIAI is probably not yet to the point where they can make grants to doing the actual work of creating AGI/FAI.