Even just increasing the “minimum wage” of AI safety work could be great imo. If all additional donations did was double the incomes of people working on existing projects that seems positive. These donations go to real people in your network.
As someone who cares more than nil about finances, it was very difficult to justify working on AI safety when not at a frontier lab… so I stopped. (It’s also emotionally a bit hard to believe AI safety is so freakin important when it often doesn’t pay.) So I suspect greater donations help bring in more talent.
I can imagine some people are going to read this comment and think “But the really dedicatd people will work on AI safety at minimum wage!” Eh, I have expensive health issues and I intend to raise kids in San Francisco. Lots of the non-profit AI safety work pays <$120k. Seems like partner and I will need to make $350k+/yr.
It would make it more competitive with AI capabilities work, diminishing the massive incentive to do the one that kills us rather than the one that prevents the killing.
(Not that I endorse all safety projects as really being safety projects; nor all capabilities projects as being on-the-path-to-extinction capabilites projects.)
I reckon it’s a small relative effect on the bigger capabilities pool, but a big relative effect on the smaller safety pool, in terms of raising the level of talent it can compete for.
Oops, I read your comment as just saying “diminishing the massive incentive to do the one that kills us” and missed “rather than the one that prevents the killing”. Agree with small effect on capabilities pool, potentially big effect on safety pool.
Even just increasing the “minimum wage” of AI safety work could be great imo. If all additional donations did was double the incomes of people working on existing projects that seems positive. These donations go to real people in your network.
As someone who cares more than nil about finances, it was very difficult to justify working on AI safety when not at a frontier lab… so I stopped. (It’s also emotionally a bit hard to believe AI safety is so freakin important when it often doesn’t pay.) So I suspect greater donations help bring in more talent.
I can imagine some people are going to read this comment and think “But the really dedicatd people will work on AI safety at minimum wage!” Eh, I have expensive health issues and I intend to raise kids in San Francisco. Lots of the non-profit AI safety work pays <$120k. Seems like partner and I will need to make $350k+/yr.
I don’t think that doubling the incomes of people working on existing projects would be a good use of resources.
It would make it more competitive with AI capabilities work, diminishing the massive incentive to do the one that kills us rather than the one that prevents the killing.
(Not that I endorse all safety projects as really being safety projects; nor all capabilities projects as being on-the-path-to-extinction capabilites projects.)
Surely this effect is tiny right? Like what fraction of capabilities researchers will plausibly change what they do?
I reckon it’s a small relative effect on the bigger capabilities pool, but a big relative effect on the smaller safety pool, in terms of raising the level of talent it can compete for.
Oops, I read your comment as just saying “diminishing the massive incentive to do the one that kills us” and missed “rather than the one that prevents the killing”. Agree with small effect on capabilities pool, potentially big effect on safety pool.