Comments
Saving for retirement might be unnecessary if AI Policy doesn't work out, so might want to focus there ;)
Hey guys — as someone doing earning to give, I’m trying to figure out how the likely influx of money from an Anthropic IPO should affect my donation choices — both in terms of where to donate and my short-term ratio between donating and saving for retirement.
This is my current understanding (or misunderstanding) of the situation, so please correct me:
- The IPO will likely happen at the end of 2026, but a large influx of money is not expected until the end of 2027 or 2028.
- Technical AI safety will likely receive the most money, followed by AI policy. The marginal donation to these cause areas will therefore only have a fraction of the impact it has now.
- S-risk and artificial sentience may also receive a lot of money, but this is more uncertain.
- Factory farming and wild animal welfare may also receive a decent amount of money, but there will likely still be many good donation opportunities in these areas.
Currently I’m mainly donating to AI policy. So, it might be a good idea to try to donate as much as possible to AI policy until ~2028. After that, I could focus more on saving for retirement and donating to other cause areas.
Do you guys agree with this, or am I getting something wrong? :)
5
RE AI policy donations: you should strongly consider providing hard money to political campaigns with pro-AI safety candidates. Campaign finance limits give you more leverage than usual as a small to medium donor.
Zach Stein-Perlman and Eric Neyman have some good resources on this.
Depending on your donation size, LongView offers donation advising.
Also, of course, consider pivoting to direct work rather than EtG, since money is likely to be less valuable.
Your overall cause areas & thoughts make a lot of sense to me.
This is good advice. Additionally (and perhaps more controversially), if you’re a person who considers digital minds and/or animal welfare close in priority to your top AI cause area, it might be worth considering moving some funding to those cause areas, since they’ll still be proportionally more neglected relative to AI safety.
These cause areas also have their own political opportunities (like Save Our Bacon) which disproportionally benefit from individual donors.
Ah, I read OP's profile, and I see that it would be harder for them than average to switch to direct work (so likely less strong advice there).
Major congrats on the 50% donation pledge, that's awesome to see.