[SI has now] shifted from waterline-raising/community-building to more technical areas where CFAR success would be of less help to them
Remember that the original motivation for the waterline-raising/community-building stuff at SI was specifically to support SI's narrower goals involving technical research. Eliezer wrote in 2009 that "after years of bogging down [at SI] I threw up my hands and explicitly recursed on the job of creating rationalists," because Friendly AI is one of those causes that needs people to be "a bit more self-aware about their motives and the nature of signaling, and a bit more moved by inconvenient cold facts."
So, CFAR's own efforts at waterline-raising and community-building should end up helping SI in the same way Less Wrong did, even though SI won't capture all or even most of that value, and even though CFAR doesn't teach classes on AI risk.
I've certainly found it to be the case that on average, people who get in contact with SI via an interest in rationality tend to be more useful than people who get in contact with SI via an interest in transhumanism or the singularity. (Though there are plenty of exceptions! E.g. Edwin Evans, Rick Schwall, Peter Thiel, Carl Shulman, and Louie Helm came to SI via the singularity materials.)
If someone has pretty good rationality skills, then it usually doesn't take long to persuade them of the basics about AI risk. But if someone is filtered instead for a strong interest in transhumanism or the singularity (and not necessarily rationality), then the conclusions they draw about AI risk, even after argument, often appear damn-near random.
There's also the fact that SI needs unusually good philosophers, and CFAR-style rationality training has some potential to help with that.
I'd be very interested in hearing from an SIAI higher-up whether they really want my money or whether they would prefer I give it to CFAR instead.
My own response to this has generally been that you should give to whichever organization you're most excited to support!
My own response to this has generally been that you should give to whichever organization you're most excited to support!
Why is that your response?
More precisely... do you actually believe that I should base my charitable giving on my level of excitement? Or do you assert that despite not believing it for some reason?
Cross-posted here.
(The Singularity Institute maintains Less Wrong, with generous help from Trike Apps, and much of the core content is written by salaried SI staff members.)
Thanks to the generosity of several major donors,† every donation to the Singularity Institute made now until January 20t (deadline extended from the 5th) will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to a total of $115,000! So please, donate now!
Now is your chance to double your impact while helping us raise up to $230,000 to help fund our research program.
(If you're unfamiliar with our mission, please see our press kit and read our short research summary: Reducing Long-Term Catastrophic Risks from Artificial Intelligence.)
Now that Singularity University has acquired the Singularity Summit, and SI's interests in rationality training are being developed by the now-separate CFAR, the Singularity Institute is making a major transition. Most of the money from the Summit acquisition is being placed in a separate fund for a Friendly AI team, and therefore does not support our daily operations or other programs.
For 12 years we've largely focused on movement-building — through the Singularity Summit, Less Wrong, and other programs. This work was needed to build up a community of support for our mission and a pool of potential researchers for our unique interdisciplinary work.
Now, the time has come to say "Mission Accomplished Well Enough to Pivot to Research." Our community of supporters is now large enough that qualified researchers are available for us to hire, if we can afford to hire them. Having published 30+ research papers and dozens more original research articles on Less Wrong, we certainly haven't neglected research. But in 2013 we plan to pivot so that a much larger share of the funds we raise is spent on research.
Accomplishments in 2012
Future Plans You Can Help Support
In the coming months, we plan to do the following:
(Other projects are still being surveyed for likely cost and strategic impact.)
We appreciate your support for our high-impact work! Donate now, and seize a better than usual chance to move our work forward. Credit card transactions are securely processed using either PayPal or Google Checkout. If you have questions about donating, please contact Louie Helm at (510) 717-1477 or louie@intelligence.org.
† $115,000 of total matching funds has been provided by Edwin Evans, Mihaly Barasz, Rob Zahra, Alexei Andreev, Jeff Bone, Michael Blume, Guy Srinivasan, and Kevin Fischer.
I will mostly be traveling (for AGI-12) for the next 25 hours, but I will try to answer questions after that.