"Tom, you appear to have given an argument for never funding anything that has research as a major component."

The utility of funding a specific project goes to zero as the amount of money that project requires per unit of output goes to infinity. Funding one project has an opportunity cost, in the utility equation, of not funding other projects. So at some point, it will make sense (doing the opposite would have a negative expected utility) to contribute to some other project than SIAI. I don't have a clear idea of where that point is, but we've gotten a lot closer in the past two years.