I used to think the singularity stuff was kinda silly and too speculative, but that's because I'd only read little bits of Kurzweil. Then I encountered the Good / Yudkowsky / Chalmers arguments and was persuaded.

This sounds familiar to me, somehow.

So I already have the motivation to do the things I've described above. The problem is that it takes a lot of time, and I'm not independently wealthy. I'm only able to make serious progress on my Friendly AI paper and book because I recently quit my IT job and I get to work on them 8 hours per day. But I can't coast for long. Lots of other people, I suspect, also have this problem of not being independently wealthy. :)

I know I've suggested this before, but the SIAI Visiting Fellows program will take care of living expenses short term, and in your case would likely lead to a long term position as a Research Fellow. It seems that you and they have a lot to offer each other.

My interests in philosophy of religion have almost completely disappeared, and working on something other than Friendly AI seems kinda pointless to me now.

Abrahamic religion seems to be a rather useless time sink to me. Rescuing people from it seems to be worth something - but it usually seems like a lot of effort for few results. A gutter outreach program is messy work as well.

commonsenseatheism.com is starting to seem like a misnomer. Your blog is now mostly about intelligent machines. Time for a new domain?