I read it as saying "we can pursue work on AI without spending hundreds of thousands on mid-level supercomputing facilities". That is, WBE isn't constrained by the limit of our computational resources, but it might be constrained by the limit of a non-profit's ability to pay for computational resources.
What kinds of expensive computations would you need running in order to make progress on WBE? (As a separate issue, why should you want to make progress on WBE?)
Yesterday I sat down with Lukeprog for a few hours and we produced this ten-page interview for the Singularity Institute blog. This interview contains information about the Singularity Institute's technical research program and recent staff changes that hasn't been announced anywhere else! We hope you find it informative.
http://singinst.org/blog/2011/09/15/interview-with-new-singularity-institute-research-fellow-luke-muehlhuaser-september-2011/