For the MIRI Conversations, some people have said they'll pay at least some money for this  https://twitter.com/lxrjl/status/1463845239664394240

Thanks for this post!

In case it's useful, here's my quoted comment in full:

If the eventual human-read versions of this creative stuff and/or the MIRI conversations are high quality in my view (see below), I'm willing to personally guarantee (say) at least $500 for a mic (if the person doesn't have one already and it costs that much) and $20/hr for up to 5 times as many hours as the cumulative total run time across all the episodes produced, with the guarantee being capped at $1500 total. 

Fine print:

• It's also plausible I'd personally provide a larger amount, and I'd guess that a funder like EAIF would provide a grant for this and would do so up to a larger amount (that'd be my preferred starting point, with me as a backup, unless the total amount requested is <$1k in which case I might just provide it right away myself). This is just what I'm willing to personally guarantee right now, without thinking about it further.
  • Note that EAIF has recently made larger grants for projects that are in some sense smaller, e.g. ~$5k for one relatively short and simple video.
• I haven't checked or thought about how much mics cost; what's a reasonable ratio of hours spent preparing, recording, editing, and publishing to hours of content produced; or what's a reasonable hourly rate. That's among the reasons it's plausible I'd provide a larger amount of compensation, and especially why it's plausible a funder like EAIF would.
• It's probably best if you contact me before you make these things, and maybe do one quick reading with whatever mic you already have so I can confirm that it seems your final version will be high-quality-as-deemed-by-me.
  • If you haven't done that, it's possible I'll later deem the thing you make insufficiently high quality, which is bad for its impact and also means I probably wouldn't pay up, and that'd also be uncomfortable and awkward.
  • In contrast, if you have done that, I might also provide part of the money in advance or something, if necessary.
• I'd definitely count as "high-quality" readings as high-quality as Rob Miles' readings of the Alignment Newsletter and the human-read versions of HPMOR and Rationality: A to Z. I'd probably also count somewhat lower-quality readings as high-quality. I wouldn't count something that's only as high-fidelity and engaging as the Nonlinear Library's machine reading as high-quality, since then there's not much point having humans read it.
• This only applies as a guarantee if the people involved don't already get funding elsewhere and if it doesn't seem more logical for them to get funding elsewhere.
  • Though it's also plausible I'd top up someone's compensation even if they get some funding elsewhere.
• Although I'm a guest manager on EAIF, I'm writing this in my personal capacity.
• This doesn't mean I'm confident that a given reader of this comment should spend their time on this.
  • There are many other things I'd also personally guarantee funding for if I thought that would increase the chance that they'd happen and if the topic came up.
  • (E.g., I'd probably prefer if Fin doesn't do this himself unless he'd find it engaging enough to not trade off against "regular work hours", since I think the opportunity cost of Fin's time is quite high)

Hi! My name is Coleman, I am an X - Risk and EA Podcastor, YouTuber, and speaker. I would absolutely love to work on either project idea with you and your team! 

Feel free to directly message me here. 

I made an AI generated podcast of the 2021 MIRI Conversations. There are different voices for the different participants, to make it easier and more natural to follow along with. 

This was done entirely in my personal capacity, and not as part of my job at MIRI. I did this because I like listening to audio and there wasn’t a good audio version of the conversations. 

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/6I0YbfFQJUv0IX6EYD1tPe

RRS: https://anchor.fm/s/1082f3c7c/podcast/rss

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2021-miri-conversations/id1838863198 

Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/biravt3t 

I would love to help out with these, especially reading!

I've already started on this for the EA Forum podcast.

Finm -- let's join forces here? Maybe we cross-post on both podcasts?

Here's the first story I recorded

If anyone wants to be a reader (authors could be great readers too!), they can ... fill out this airtable-linked form

... or just add their info to the shared airtable, itself and 'claim' a story (or other EA Forum post) to read in the forum_posts_episodes table (minimal_entry view if you want to be quick)

I'd love to read! Female American voice here. I'm a trained singer, but not a trained voice actor. I have a Tascam DR-05 and might be able to finagle access to a recording studio.

This is great timing. I'm currently in the middle of reading Significant Digits aloud. Just this past week, I realized that voice acting is a ton of fun and I'd like to contribute to a project :) 

Thanks for organizing, Fin!

Hi Fin, this is a cool and seemingly worthwhile project - I'm happy to contribute by recording some of the text (in my slightly? South African accent) :p

I'd be happy to contribute by reading aloud! However, I don't have any specialty recording equipment, so you might not want to include me if you're going for high sound quality.

Hi Finn, I'd be happy to help out with these (on recording voice especially, I don't think I can commit time for audio editing at the moment). I've already got a mic for my podcast (Samsung Q2U) so if that was good enough, I wouldn't need as much set-up time.