Too bad we can't judge Friendly AI charity effectiveness as "easily" as we can judge the effectiveness of some other charities, like those which distribute malaria nets and vaccines.
If one assumes that giving toward solving the Friendly AI problem offers the highest marginal return on investment, which project do you give to? Yudkowsky / SIAI? OpenCog / Goertzel? Gert-Jan Lokhorst? Stan Franklin / Wendell Wallach / Colin Allen?
My money is on SIAI, but I can't justify that with anything quick and easy.
As I see it, OpenCog is making practical progress towards an architecture for AGI, whereas SIAI is focused on the theory of Friendly AI.
I specifically added "consultation with SIAI" in the latter part of OpenCog's roadmap to try to ensure the highest odds of OpenCog remaining friendly under self-improvement.
As far as I'm aware there is no software development going on in SIAI, it's all theoretical and philosophical comment on decision theory etc. (this might have changed, but I haven't heard anything about them launching an engineering or experimental effort).
Artificial general intelligence researcher Ben Goertzel answered my question on charitable giving and gave his permission to publish it here. I think the opinion of highly educated experts who have read most of the available material is important to estimate the public and academic perception of risks from AI and the effectiveness with which the risks are communicated by LessWrong and the SIAI.
Alexander Kruel asked:
Ben Goertzel replied:
What can one learn from this?
I'm planning to contact and ask various experts, who are aware of risks from AI, the same question.