David_Gerard comments on Thoughts on the Singularity Institute (SI) - Less Wrong

256 Post author: HoldenKarnofsky 11 May 2012 04:31AM

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Comment author: lukeprog 11 May 2012 08:13:02AM *  54 points [-]

note that these improvements would not and could not have happened without more funding than the level of previous years

Really? That's not obvious to me. Of course you've been around for all this and I haven't, but here's what I'm seeing from my vantage point...

Recent changes that cost very little:

  • Donor database
  • Strategic plan
  • Monthly progress reports
  • A list of research problems SI is working on (it took me 16 hours to write)
  • IntelligenceExplosion.com, Friendly-AI.com, AI Risk Bibliography 2012, annotated list of journals that may publish papers on AI risk, a partial history of AI risk research, and a list of forthcoming and desired articles on AI risk (each of these took me only 10-25 hours to create)
  • Detailed tracking of the expenses for major SI projects
  • Staff worklogs
  • Staff dinners (or something that brought staff together)
  • A few people keeping their eyes on SI's funds so theft would be caught sooner
  • Optimization of Google Adwords

Stuff that costs less than some other things SI had spent money on, such as funding Ben Goertzel's AGI research or renting downtown Berkeley apartments for the later visiting fellows:

  • Research papers
  • Management of staff and projects
  • Rachael Briggs' TDT write-up
  • Best-practices bookkeeping/accounting
  • New website
  • LaTeX template for SI publications; references checked and then organized with BibTeX
  • SEO

Do you disagree with these estimates, or have I misunderstood what you're claiming?

Comment author: David_Gerard 12 May 2012 06:37:08PM *  19 points [-]

A lot of charities go through this pattern before they finally work out how to transition from a board-run/individual-run tax-deductible band of conspirators to being a professional staff-run organisation tuned to doing the particular thing they do. The changes required seem simple and obvious in hindsight, but it's a common pattern for it to take years, so SIAI has been quite normal, or at the very least not been unusually dumb.

(My evidence is seeing this pattern close-up in the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia UK (the first attempt at which died before managing it, the second making it through barely) and the West Australian Music Industry Association, and anecdotal evidence from others. Everyone involved always feels stupid at having taken years to achieve the retrospectively obvious. I would be surprised if this aspect of the dynamics of nonprofits had not been studied.)

edit: Luke's recommendation of The Nonprofit Kit For Dummies looks like precisely the book all the examples I know of needed to have someone throw at them before they even thought of forming an organisation to do whatever it is they wanted to achieve.

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