I just published a post on Drexler's MSEP software that is relevant to whether people should donate to his project.
two more organizations that seem worthy of consideration
Investing in Eon Systems looks much more promising than donating to Carbon Copies.
I see maybe a 3% chance that they'll succeed at WBE soon enough to provide help with AI x-risk.
The Invention of Lying provides a mostly accurate portrayal of a world where everyone is honest. It feels fairly Hansonian.
No, I don't recall any ethical concerns. Just basic concerns such as the difficulty of finding a boss that I'm comfortable with, having control over my hours, etc.
Oura also has heart rate and VO2 max tracking. Does anyone know of problems with Oura's data?
The primary motive for funding NASA was definitely related to competing with the USSR, but I doubt that it was heavily focused on military applications. It was more along the lines of demonstrating the general superiority of the US system, in order to get neutral countries to side with us because we were on track to win the cold war.
Manifold estimates an 81% chance of ASI by 2036, using a definition that looks fairly weak and subjective to me.
I've bid the brain emulation market back up a bit.
Brain emulation looks closer than your summary table indicates.
Manifold estimates a 48% chance by 2039.
Eon Systems is hiring for work on brain emulation.
We can only value lives at $10 million when we have limited opportunities to make that trade, or we’d go bankrupt.
I'm suspicious of the implication that we have many such opportunities. But a quick check suggests says it's very dependent on guesses as to how many lives are saved be treatments.
I did a crude check for lives saved by cancer treatments. Optimistic estimates suggest that lives are being saved at less than $1 million per life. Robin Hanson's writings have implied that the average medical treatments is orders of magnitude less effective than that.
My guess is that ASI will be faster to adapt to novel weapons and military strategies. Nanotech is likely to speed up the rate at which new weapons are designed and fabricated.
Imagine a world in which a rogue AI can replicate a billion drones, of a somewhat novel design, in a week or so. Existing human institutions aren't likely to adapt fast enough to react competently to that.