I currently have something like 50% chance that the point of no return will happen by 2030. Moreover, it seems to me that there's a wager for short timelines, i.e. you should act as if short timelines scenarios are more likely than they really are, because you have more influence over them. I think that I am currently taking short timelines scenarios much more seriously than most people, even most people in the AI safety community. I suppose this is mostly due to having higher credence in them, but maybe there are other factors as well.
Anyhow, I wonder if there are ways for me to usefully bet on this difference.
Money is only valuable to me prior to the point of no return, so the value to me of a bet that pays off after that point is reached is approximately zero. In fact it's not just money that has this property. This means that no matter how good the odds are that you offer me, and even if you pay up front, I'm better off just taking out a low-interest loan instead. Besides, I don't need money right now anyway, at least to continue my research activities. I'd only be able to achieve significant amounts of extra good if I had quite a lot more money.
What do I need right now? I guess I need knowledge and help. I'd love to have a better sense of what the world will be like and what needs to be done to save it. And I'd love to have more people doing what needs to be done.
Can I buy these things with money? I don't think so... As the linked post argues, knowledge isn't something you can buy, in general. On some topics it is, but not all, and in particular not on the topic of what needs to be done to save the world. As for help, I've heard from various other people that hiring is net-negative unless the person you hire is both really capable and really aligned with your goals. But IDK.
There are plenty of people who are really capable and really aligned with my goals. Some of them are already helping, i.e. already doing what needs to be done. But most aren't. I think this is mostly because they disagree about what needs to be done, and I think that is largely because their timelines are longer than mine. So, maybe we can arrange some sort of bet... for example, maybe I could approach people who are capable and aligned but have longer timelines, and say: "If you agree to act as if my timelines are correct for the next five years, I'll act as if yours are correct thereafter."
Any suggestions?
I don't think the problem you're running into is a problem with making bets, it's a problem with leverage.
Heck, you've already figured out how to place a bet that'll pay off in future, but pay you money now: a loan. Combined with either the implicit bet on the end of the world freeing you from repayment, or an explicit one with a more-AI-skeptical colleague, this gets you your way of betting on AI risk that pays now.
Where it falls short is that most loanmaking organisations will at most offer you slightly more than the collateral you can put up. Because, well, to most loanmaking organisations you're just a big watery bag of counterparty risk, and if they loan you substantially more than your net worth they're very unlikely to get it back - even if you lose your bet!
But this is a problem people have run into before! Every day there are organisations who want to get lots more cash than they can put up in collateral in order to make risky investments that might not pay off. Those organisations sell shares. Shares entitle the buyer to a fraction of the uncertain future revenues, and it's that upside risk - the potential for the funder to make a lot more money than was put in - that separates them from loans.
Now as an individual you're cut off from stock markets. The closest approximation available is venture capital. That gives you almost everything you want, except that it requires you come up with a way to monetise your beliefs.
The other path is to pay your funders in expected better-worlds, and that takes you to the door of charitable funding. Here I'm thinking both of places like the LTFF and SAF, and more generally of HNW funders themselves. The former is pretty accessible, but limited in its capacity. The latter is less accessible, but with much greater capacity. In both cases they expect more than just a bet thesis; they require a plan to actually pay them back some better-worlds!
It's worth noting that if you actually have a plan - even a vague one! - for reducing the risk from short AI timelines, then you shouldn't have much trouble getting some expenses out of LTFF/SAF/etc to explore it. They're pretty generous. If you can't convince them of your plan's value - then in all honesty your plan likely needs more work. If you can convince them, it's a solid path to substantially more direct funding.
But those, I think, are the only possible solutions to your issue. They all have some sort of barrier to entry, but that's necessary because from the outside you're indistinguishable from any other gambler!