I’d love to see people working on Retroactive Funding for Alignment. Something like a DAO with Governance tokens that only pays out after there is consensus that (1) AGI/ASI has been achieved, and (2) humanity has survived. Using AI or human evaluations, there would be an attempt to “traceback” the greatest contributors toward our survival. The researchers, the organizations, the individuals, the donors, the investors. All would receive a payout, based on their calculated impact. It’s a way of almost bringing money from the future into the present, and a way of forcing donors, investors, and researchers to think about what will actually contribute toward a positive future. It would also add incentive for donors, since their contribution would also be later rewarded. Would love to speak further with anyone in the Retroactive Funding or DeSci space.
also, even if we don’t set anything like this up now, you should expect that in worlds where alignment gets solved and ASI is built, people will probably consider it a wise decision to retroactively reward people who made things go well in general based on their calculated impact.
(i’m also default-skeptical of anything to do with crypto in any way whatsoever for the purposes of building lasting institutions. i don’t care how good a DAO could be in theory, the average DAO has a lifespan shorter than the average SF startup)
Yes, people might, but how can that be mapped back in a way that gets people to invest/prioritize those future rewards now? Not sure if DAO is the best way, either. But it seems there needs to be some kind of verifiable committment now that people could reference.
[Same as what I replied to your DM:] Yeah, exactly! Systems like that were on my mind a lot around 2021–23 when we launched Impact Markets, which is now GiveWiki. You could do the payouts if humanity has survived for another year, has survived AGI, has survived a year with AGI, etc. You could also chain retrofunders with different time horizons. We tried to get something like this off the ground for about 2 years, but couldn’t find any retrofunders anymore after FTX collapsed. (Some of the regrantors were interested.)
I’d love to see people working on Retroactive Funding for Alignment. Something like a DAO with Governance tokens that only pays out after there is consensus that (1) AGI/ASI has been achieved, and (2) humanity has survived. Using AI or human evaluations, there would be an attempt to “traceback” the greatest contributors toward our survival. The researchers, the organizations, the individuals, the donors, the investors. All would receive a payout, based on their calculated impact. It’s a way of almost bringing money from the future into the present, and a way of forcing donors, investors, and researchers to think about what will actually contribute toward a positive future. It would also add incentive for donors, since their contribution would also be later rewarded. Would love to speak further with anyone in the Retroactive Funding or DeSci space.
also, even if we don’t set anything like this up now, you should expect that in worlds where alignment gets solved and ASI is built, people will probably consider it a wise decision to retroactively reward people who made things go well in general based on their calculated impact.
(i’m also default-skeptical of anything to do with crypto in any way whatsoever for the purposes of building lasting institutions. i don’t care how good a DAO could be in theory, the average DAO has a lifespan shorter than the average SF startup)
Yes, people might, but how can that be mapped back in a way that gets people to invest/prioritize those future rewards now? Not sure if DAO is the best way, either. But it seems there needs to be some kind of verifiable committment now that people could reference.
[Same as what I replied to your DM:] Yeah, exactly! Systems like that were on my mind a lot around 2021–23 when we launched Impact Markets, which is now GiveWiki. You could do the payouts if humanity has survived for another year, has survived AGI, has survived a year with AGI, etc. You could also chain retrofunders with different time horizons. We tried to get something like this off the ground for about 2 years, but couldn’t find any retrofunders anymore after FTX collapsed. (Some of the regrantors were interested.)
https://impactmarkets.substack.com/p/chaining-retroactive-funders
If you can find a retrofunder for a system like that, you can make it happen!