FYI, the SIAI Canada page on the Singularity Institute website still says this:
SIAI-CA is the Canadian ‘on-ramp’ for supporters of SIAI. We exist to facilitate Canadians in supporting the charitable objectives of SIAI. We do this in two ways: tax relief and oversight.
http://singularity.org/siai-canada/
I know if I hadn't asked Louie before donating to SIAI I would have donated to SIAI Canada, thinking it would have the same consequences except I'd get a tax break. I wonder how many thousand of dollars you've lost this way?
Not much, at least not since I took over SI in November 2011. SIAI-CA executed our recommendation for how to spend the last $5k they've spent since November 2011 — though it can be quite a lot of effort to find a good way for SIAI-CA to spend the money from Canada. Even more importantly, we know who all our biggest supporters in Canada are, so we've explained the situation to them personally and they generally donate directly rather than through SIAI-CA.
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.