Update: We've hit our first fundraising target! We're now nearing the $200k mark. Concretely, additional donations at this point will have several effects on MIRI's operations over the coming year:

• There are a half-dozen promising people we'd be hiring on a trial basis if we had the funds. Not everyone in this reference class can be sent to e.g. the Oxford and Cambridge groups working on AI risk (CSER, FHI, Leverhulme CFI), because those organizations have different hiring criteria and aren't primarily focused on our kind of research. This is one of the main ways a more successful fundraiser this month translates into additional AI alignment research on the margin.

This includes several research fellows we're considering hiring (with varying levels of confidence) in the next year. Being less funding-constrained would make us more confident that our growth is sustainable, causing us to move significantly faster on these hires.

• Secondarily, additional funds would allow us to run additional workshops and run longer and meatier fellows/scholars programs.

Larger donations would allow us to expand the research team size we're shooting for, and also spend a lot more time on academic outreach.