Michael Anissimov posted the following on the SIAI blog:
Thanks to the generosity of two major donors; Jaan Tallinn, a founder of Skype and Ambient Sound Investments, and Edwin Evans, CEO of the mobile applications startup Quinly, every contribution to the Singularity Institute up until January 20, 2011 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to a total of $125,000.
Interested in optimal philanthropy — that is, maximizing the future expected benefit to humanity per charitable dollar spent? The technological creation of greater-than-human intelligence has the potential to unleash an “intelligence explosion” as intelligent systems design still more sophisticated successors. This dynamic could transform our world as greatly as the advent of human intelligence has already transformed the Earth, for better or for worse. Thinking rationally about these prospects and working to encourage a favorable outcome offers an extraordinary chance to make a difference. The Singularity Institute exists to do so through its research, the Singularity Summit, and public education.
We support both direct engagements with the issues as well as the improvements in methodology and rationality needed to make better progress. Through our Visiting Fellows program, researchers from undergrads to Ph.Ds pursue questions on the foundations of Artificial Intelligence and related topics in two-to-three month stints. Our Resident Faculty, up to four researchers from three last year, pursues long-term projects, including AI research, a literature review, and a book on rationality, the first draft of which was just completed. Singularity Institute researchers and representatives gave over a dozen presentations at half a dozen conferences in 2010. Our Singularity Summit conference in San Francisco was a great success, bringing together over 600 attendees and 22 top scientists and other speakers to explore cutting-edge issues in technology and science.
We are pleased to receive donation matching support this year from Edwin Evans of the United States, a long-time Singularity Institute donor, and Jaan Tallinn of Estonia, a more recent donor and supporter. Jaan recently gave a talk on the Singularity and his life at a entrepreneurial group in Finland. Here’s what Jaan has to say about us:
“We became the dominant species on this planet by being the most intelligent species around. This century we are going to cede that crown to machines. After we do that, it will be them steering history rather than us. Since we have only one shot at getting the transition right, the importance of SIAI’s work cannot be overestimated. Not finding any organisation to take up this challenge as seriously as SIAI on my side of the planet, I conclude that it’s worth following them across 10 time zones.”
– Jaan Tallinn, Singularity Institute donor
Make a lasting impact on the long-term future of humanity today — make a donation to the Singularity Institute and help us reach our $125,000 goal. For more detailed information on our projects and work, contact us at institute@intelligence.org or read our new organizational overview.
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Kaj's commentary: if you haven't done so recently, do check out the SIAI publications page. There are several new papers and presentations, out of which I thought that Carl Shulman's Whole Brain Emulations and the Evolution of Superorganisms made for particularly fascinating (and scary) reading. SIAI's finally starting to get its paper-writing machinery into gear, so let's give them money to make that possible. There's also a static page about this challenge; if you're on Facebook, please take the time to "like" it there.
(Full disclosure: I was an SIAI Visiting Fellow in April-July 2010.)
This posting above, which begins with an argument that is absolutely silly, managed to receive 11 votes. Don't tell me there isn't irrational prejudice here!
The argument that any donation is subject to similar objections is silly because it's obvious that a human-welfare maximizer would plug for the the donation the donor believes best, despite the unlikelihood of finding the absolute best. It should also be obvious that my argument is that it's unlikely that the Singularity Institute comes anywhere near the best donation, and one reason it's unlikely is related to the unlikelihood of picking the best, even if you have to forgo the literal very best!
Numerous posters wouldn't pick this particular charity, even if it happened to be among the best, unless they were motivated by signaling aspirations rather than the rational choice of the best recipient. As Yvain said in the previous entry: "Deciding which charity is the best is hard." Rationalists should detect the irrationality of making an exception when one option is the Singularity Institute.
(As to whether signaling is rational, completely irrelevant to the discussion, as we're talking about the best donation from a human-welfare standpoint. To argue that the contribution makes sense because signaling might be as rational as donating, even if plausible, is merely to change the subject, rather than respond to the argument.)
Another argument for the Singularity Institute donation I can't be dismiss so easily. I read the counter-argument as saying that the Singularity Institute is clearly the best donation conceivable. To that I don't have an answer, not any more than I have a counter-argument for many outright delusions. I would ask this question: what comparison did donors make to decide the Singularity Institute is a better recipient than the one mentioned in Yvain's preceding entry, where each $500 saves a human life.
Before downvoting this, ask yourself whether you're saying my point is unintelligent or shouldn't be raised for other reasons. (Ask yourself if my point should be made, was made by anyone else, and isn't better than at least 50% of the postings here. Ask yourself whether it's rational to upvote the critic and his silly argument and whether the many donors arrived at their views about the Singularity Institute's importance based on the representative heuristic, the aura effect, which surrounds Eliezer, ignoring the probability of delivering any benefit,and a multitude of other errors in reasoning.)
Do you have any argument for why the SIAI is unlikely to be the best other than the sheer size of the option space?
This is a community where a lot of the members have put substantial thought into locating the optimum in that option space, and have well developed reasons for their conclusion. Further, there are not a lot of real charities clustered around that optimum. Simply claiming a low prior probability of picking the right charity is not a strong argument here. If you have additional arguments, I suggest you explain them further.
(I'll also add that ... (read more)