Although I don’t have much cash to spare, I’ve cut back in some personal budget areas for the next few months and donated $500 to the ‘Hard Takeoff Paper’ project. I have two hopes: that the donation (and matching funds) will make a non-negligible difference in the number of AI researchers taking the possibility of hard takeoff seriously, and that publicly posting this will nudge at least a few people into re-evaluating their willingness to donate to SIAI.
I’m also a college student, but I can’t think of any personal budget areas cut back on. I think a donation to SIAI would probably result in a commiserate increase in my eventual student loans. Can someone from SIAI tell me if they’d be borrowing money at student-loan interest rates if they had the opportunity? If not, I’ll probably wait until I’m out of college and I have my loans paid off to donate.
This is an excellent question. There’s been a lot of discussion of discount rates around here, and the general consensus seems to be that they’re above student-loan rates, though I’d like to show this to Anna and Michael.
ETA: Just spoke with Michael Vassar. By any estimate, our discount rates are higher than student loan rates. If you can give now, please do.
Although I don’t have much cash to spare, I’ve cut back in some personal budget areas for the next few months and donated $500 to the ‘Hard Takeoff Paper’ project. I have two hopes: that the donation (and matching funds) will make a non-negligible difference in the number of AI researchers taking the possibility of hard takeoff seriously, and that publicly posting this will nudge at least a few people into re-evaluating their willingness to donate to SIAI.
That’s awesome.
I’m also a college student, but I can’t think of any personal budget areas cut back on. I think a donation to SIAI would probably result in a commiserate increase in my eventual student loans. Can someone from SIAI tell me if they’d be borrowing money at student-loan interest rates if they had the opportunity? If not, I’ll probably wait until I’m out of college and I have my loans paid off to donate.
This is an excellent question. There’s been a lot of discussion of discount rates around here, and the general consensus seems to be that they’re above student-loan rates, though I’d like to show this to Anna and Michael.
ETA: Just spoke with Michael Vassar. By any estimate, our discount rates are higher than student loan rates. If you can give now, please do.