My name is Mikhail Samin (diminutive Misha, @Mihonarium on Twitter, @misha in Telegram).

I’m an effective altruist, and I worry about existential risks endangering the future of humanity. I want the universe not to lose most of its value.

I believe global coordination is necessary to mitigate the risks from advanced AI systems.

I took the Giving What We Can pledge to donate at least 10% of my income for the rest of my life or until the day I retire (why?).

Numerous AI Safety researchers told me that they were able to improve their understanding of the alignment problem by talking to me.

My current research interests are focused on AI alignment and AI governance. I’m always happy to talk to policymakers and researchers and get them in touch with various experts and think tanks.

In the past, I’ve launched the most funded crowdfunding campaign in the history of Russia (it was to print HPMOR! we printed 21 000 copies, which is 63k books) and founded audd.io, which allowed me to donate >$100k to EA causes, including >$50k to MIRI.

[Less important: I also started a project to translate 80000hours.org into Russian. The impact and the effectiveness aside, for a year, I was the head of the Russian Pastafarian Church: a movement claiming to be a parody religion, with 215 000 members in Russia at the time, trying to increase the separation between religious organisations and the state. I was a political activist and a human rights advocate. I studied relevant Russian and international law and wrote appeals that won cases against the Russian government in courts; I was able to protect people from unlawful police action. I co-founded the Moscow branch of the “Vesna” democratic movement, coordinated election observers in a Moscow district, wrote dissenting opinions for members of electoral commissions, helped Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, helped Telegram with internet censorship circumvention, and participated in and organised protests and campaigns. The large-scale goal was to build a civil society and turn Russia into a democracy through nonviolent resistance. This goal wasn’t achieved, but some of the more local campaigns were successful. That felt important and was also mostly fun- except for being detained by the police. And I estimate that there’s maybe a 30% chance the Russian authorities will throw me in prison if I visit Russia.]