Church and cute puppies are likely worse causes, yes. I listed animal charities in my "Bad causes" video.
I don't have their budget at my fingertips - but SIAI has raked in around 200,000 dollars a year for the last few years. Not enormous - but not trivial. Anyway, my concern is not really with the cash, but with the memes. This is a field adjacent to one I am interested in: machine intelligence. I am sure there will be a festival of fear-mongering marketing in this area as time passes, with each organisation trying to convince consumers that its products will be safer than those of its rivals. "3-laws-safe" slogans will be printed. I note that Google's recent chrome ad was full of data destruction images - and ended with the slogan "be safe".
Some of this is potentially good. However, some of it isn't - and is more reminiscent of the Daisy ad.
I believe the numbers are actually higher than $200,000. SIAI's 2008 budget was about $500,000. 2006 was about $400,000 and 2007 was about $300,000 (as listed further in the linked thread). I haven't researched to see if gross revenue numbers or revenue from donations are available. Curiously, Guidestar does not seem to have 2009 numbers for SIAI, or at least I couldn't find those numbers; I just e-mailed a couple people at SIAI asking about that.
That being said, even $500,000, while not trivial, seems to me a pretty small budget.
Ideally, I'd like to save the world. One way to do that involves contributing academic research, which raises the question of what's the most effective way of doing that.
The traditional wisdom says if you want to do research, you should get a job in a university. But for the most part the system seems to be set up so that you first spend a long time working for someone else and research their ideas, after which you can lead your own group, but then most of your time will be spent on applying for grants and other administrative trivia rather than actually researching the interesting stuff. Also, in Finland at least, all professors need to also spend time doing teaching, so that's another time sink.
I suspect I would have more time to actually dedicate on research, and I could get doing it quicker, if I took a part-time job and did the research in my spare time. E.g. the recommended rates for a freelance journalist in Finland would allow me to spend a week each month doing work and three weeks doing research, of course assuming that I can pull off the freelance journalism part.
What (dis)advantages does this have compared to the traditional model?
Some advantages:
Some disadvantages:
EDIT: Note that while I certainly do appreciate comments specific to my situation, I posted this over at LW and not Discussion because I was hoping the discussion would also be useful for others who might be considering an academic path. So feel free to also provide commentary that's US-specific, say.