The $125,000 Summer Singularity Challenge

Kaj_Sotala

32 The $125,000 Summer Singularity Challenge

by Kaj_Sotala

29th Jul 2011

3 min read

262

32

From the SingInst blog:

Thanks to the generosity of several major donors^†, every donation to the Singularity Institute made now until August 31, 2011 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to a total of $125,000.

Donate now!

(Visit the challenge page to see a progress bar.)

Now is your chance to double your impact while supporting the Singularity Institute and helping us raise up to $250,000 to help fund our research program and stage the upcoming Singularity Summit… which you can register for now!

^† $125,000 in backing for this challenge is being generously provided by Rob Zahra, Quixey, Clippy, Luke Nosek, Edwin Evans, Rick Schwall, Brian Cartmell, Mike Blume, Jeff Bone, Johan Edström, Zvi Mowshowitz, John Salvatier, Louie Helm, Kevin Fischer, Emil Gilliam, Rob and Oksana Brazell, Guy Srinivasan, John Chisholm, and John Ku.

2011 has been a huge year for Artificial Intelligence. With the IBM computer Watson defeating two top Jeopardy! champions in February, it’s clear that the field is making steady progress. Journalists like Torie Bosch of Slate have argued that “We need to move from robot-apocalypse jokes to serious discussions about the emerging technology.” We couldn’t agree more — in fact, the Singularity Institute has been thinking about how to create safe and ethical artificial intelligence since long before the Singularity landed on the front cover of TIME magazine.

The last 1.5 years were our biggest ever. Since the beginning of 2010, we have:

Held our annual Singularity Summit, in San Francisco. Speakers included Ray Kurzweil, James Randi, Irene Pepperberg, and many others.
Held the first Singularity Summit Australia and Singularity Summit Salt Lake City.
Held a wildly successful Rationality Minicamp.
Published seven research papers, including Yudkowsky’s much-awaited ‘Timeless Decision Theory‘.
Helped philosopher David Chalmers write his seminal paper ‘The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis‘, which has sparked broad discussion in academia, including an entire issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies and a book from Springer devoted to responses to Chalmers’ paper.
Launched the Research Associates program.
Brought MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark onto our advisory board, published our Singularity FAQ, and much more.

In the coming year, we plan to do the following:

Hold our annual Singularity Summit, in New York City this year.
Publish three chapters in the upcoming academic volume The Singularity Hypothesis, along with several other papers.
Improve organizational transparency by creating a simpler, easier-to-use website that includes Singularity Institute planning and policy documents.
Publish a document of open research problems related to Friendly AI, to clarify the research space and encourage other researchers to contribute to our mission.
Add additional skilled researchers to our Research Associates program.
Publish well-researched documents making the case for existential risk reduction as optimal philanthropy.
Diversify our funding sources by applying for targeted grants and advertising our affinity credit card program.

We appreciate your support for our high-impact work. As PayPal co-founder and Singularity Institute donor Peter Thiel said:

“I’m interested in facilitating a forum in which there can be… substantive research on how to bring about a world in which AI will be friendly to humans rather than hostile… [The Singularity Institute represents] a combination of very talented people with the right problem space [they’re] going after… [They’ve] done a phenomenal job… on a shoestring budget. From my perspective, the key question is always: What’s the amount of leverage you get as an investor? Where can a small amount make a big difference? This is a very leveraged kind of philanthropy.”

Donate now, and seize a better than usual chance to move our work forward. Credit card transactions are securely processed through Causes.com, Google Checkout, or PayPal. If you have questions about donating, please call Amy Willey at (586) 381-1801.

Grants & Fundraising Opportunities

Personal Blog

32

New Comment

Rendering 0/262 comments, sorted by

top scoring

(show more) Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 5:40 PM

Some comments are truncated due to high volume. (⌘F to expand all)Change truncation settings

Moderation Log

32 The $125,000 Summer Singularity Challenge

by Kaj_Sotala

29th Jul 2011

3 min read

262

32

From the SingInst blog:

Thanks to the generosity of several major donors^†, every donation to the Singularity Institute made now until August 31, 2011 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to a total of $125,000.

Donate now!

(Visit the challenge page to see a progress bar.)

The last 1.5 years were our biggest ever. Since the beginning of 2010, we have:

Held our annual Singularity Summit, in San Francisco. Speakers included Ray Kurzweil, James Randi, Irene Pepperberg, and many others.
Held the first Singularity Summit Australia and Singularity Summit Salt Lake City.
Held a wildly successful Rationality Minicamp.
Published seven research papers, including Yudkowsky’s much-awaited ‘Timeless Decision Theory‘.
Helped philosopher David Chalmers write his seminal paper ‘The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis‘, which has sparked broad discussion in academia, including an entire issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies and a book from Springer devoted to responses to Chalmers’ paper.
Launched the Research Associates program.
Brought MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark onto our advisory board, published our Singularity FAQ, and much more.

In the coming year, we plan to do the following:

Hold our annual Singularity Summit, in New York City this year.
Publish three chapters in the upcoming academic volume The Singularity Hypothesis, along with several other papers.
Improve organizational transparency by creating a simpler, easier-to-use website that includes Singularity Institute planning and policy documents.
Publish a document of open research problems related to Friendly AI, to clarify the research space and encourage other researchers to contribute to our mission.
Add additional skilled researchers to our Research Associates program.
Publish well-researched documents making the case for existential risk reduction as optimal philanthropy.
Diversify our funding sources by applying for targeted grants and advertising our affinity credit card program.

We appreciate your support for our high-impact work. As PayPal co-founder and Singularity Institute donor Peter Thiel said:

“I’m interested in facilitating a forum in which there can be… substantive research on how to bring about a world in which AI will be friendly to humans rather than hostile… [The Singularity Institute represents] a combination of very talented people with the right problem space [they’re] going after… [They’ve] done a phenomenal job… on a shoestring budget. From my perspective, the key question is always: What’s the amount of leverage you get as an investor? Where can a small amount make a big difference? This is a very leveraged kind of philanthropy.”

Grants & Fundraising Opportunities

Personal Blog

32

New Comment

Rendering 0/262 comments, sorted by

top scoring

(show more) Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 5:40 PM

Some comments are truncated due to high volume. (⌘F to expand all)Change truncation settings

Moderation Log

More from Kaj_Sotala

Curated and popular this week

262Comments

262

Comment Permalink

shokwave15y30

Essentially, the claim is that 20 of SingInst's regular donors have extra money lying around that they are willing to donate to SingInst iff someone else donates the same amount.

Bear with my broad strokes here.

Let the utility u of donating x dollars to SingInst be diminishing: u = x^(1/3).

Assume that hedonistic spending can be spread over enough options to make diminishing returns negligible: u = x

The donor then donates their first dollar to SingInst, whereupon hedonistic spending provides them more utils.

The utility u of providing x dollars of a dollar-for-dollar service for SingInst donors is: u = (2x)^(1/3), and the donor gets up to ~1.415 dollars (to gain 2.83 dollars worth of donating utility!) before hedonistic spending is a better option. So this answers the first claim: they are willing to donate extra money iff someone else donates, and they intend to spend it on some other form of utility otherwise. The nature of dollar-for-dollar matching increases the utility they gain from their dollar.

As for the second part... there's no need to commit to a binding agreement to not donate the leftover to SingInst at the end. Say the donor donated a dollar by themselves, then offered up to 41 cents matching contribution. Other donors take advantage of this offer by 20 cents - the donor still has another 21 cents of positive utility before hedonistic spending takes over, but the matching period ends at this point in time. (Why end the matching period? I'll get there in a second). At this point, those 21 cents will generate .21 utils if spent hedonistically, but only .06 utils if donated without matching.

So the nature of diminishing utility will produce this behaviour. It's not so suspicious a premise, in the end.

shokwave15y30

Now, why end the matching period? A utility-maximising donor ought to offer their 41 cents for as long as it takes - the utility of those 41 cents is always going to be higher than any 41-cent section of hedonistic spending (which is where the money is coming from). The answer lies partly in human psychology. A limited-time offer prompts action in a way that open-ended, time-independent offers do not. A progress bar prompts action too. It's also partly from status: successfully completing campaigns like this raises the prestige of SingInst. Meeting the tar... (read more)

See in context