In each cause area, what are high-quality funding opportunities/project ideas that Open Phil would like to fund but that don’t currently exist? 

What are some of the most common misconceptions EAs have about Open Phil grantmaking? 

Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio
-- Nassim Taleb

What does your personal investment portfolio look like? Are there any unusual steps you've taken due to your study of the future? What aspect of your approach to personal investment do you think readers might be wise to consider?

How has serving on the OpenAI board changed your thinking about AI?

How do your thoughts on career advice differ from those of 80,000 Hours? If you could offer only generic advice in a paragraph or three, what would you say?

What have you changed your mind on or updated your beliefs the most on within the last year?

How has OpenPhil's Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness strategy changed in light of how the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded so far? What biosecurity interventions, technologies or research directions seem more (or less) valuable now than they did a year ago?

In addition to funding AI work, Open Phil’s longtermist grantmaking includes sizeable grants toward areas like biosecurity and climate change/engineering, while other major longtermist funders (such as the Long Term Future Fund, BERI, and the Survival and Flourishing Fund) have overwhelmingly supported AI with their grantmaking. As an example, I estimate that “for every dollar Open Phil has spent on biosecurity, it’s spent ~$1.50 on AI… but for every dollar LTFF has spent on biosecurity, it’s spent ~$19 on AI.” 

Do you agree this distinction exists, and if so, are you concerned by it? Are there longtermist funding opportunities outside of AI that you are particularly excited about? 

What’s a skill you have spent deliberate effort in developing that has paid off a lot? Or alternatively, what is a skill you wish you had spent deliberate effort developing much earlier than you did? 

To operate in the broad range of cause areas openphil does, I imagine you need to regularly seek advice from external advisors. I have the impression that cultivating good sources of advice is a strong suite of both yours and OpenPhils.

I bet you also get approached by less senior folks asking for advice with some frequency.

As advisor and advisee: how can EAs be more effective at seeking and making use of good advice?

Possible subquestions: What common mistakes have you seen early career EAs make when soliciting advice, eg on career trajectory? When do you see advice make the biggest positive difference in someone’s impact? What changes would you make to how the EA community typically conducts these types of advisor/advisee relationships, if any?

Question: 

What would you personally want to do with 10x the current level of funds available? What would you personally like to do with 200x the current level of funds available?

Some context:

There is sentiment that funding is high and that Open Philanthropy is “not funding constrained”. 

I think it is reasonable to question this perspective.

This is because while Open Philanthropy may have access to $15 billion dollars of funds from the main donors, annual potato chip spending in the US may be $7 billion dollars, and bank overdraft fees may be about $11 billion. 

This puts into perspective the scale of Open Philanthropy next to the economic activity of just one country.

Many systemic issues may only be addressable at this scale of funding. Also, billionaire wealth seems large and continues to grow.

Do you think the emergence of COVID-19 has increased or decreased our level of existential risk this century, and why?

I hear the vague umbrella term “good judgement” or even more simply “thinking well” thrown around a lot in the EA community. Do you have thoughts on how to cultivate good judgement? Did you do anything - deliberately or otherwise - to develop better judgement?

For you personally, do you think that loving what you do is correlated with or necessary for doing it really well?

Consider the premise that the current instantiation of Effective Altruism is defective, and one of the only solutions is some action by Open Philanthropy.

By “defective”, I mean:

A. EA struggles to engage even a base of younger “HYPS” and “FAANG”, much less millions of altruistic people with free time and resources. Also, EA seems like it should have more acceptance in the “wider non-profit world” than it has.

B. The precious projects funded or associated with Open Philanthropy and EA often seem to merely "work alongside EA". Some constructs or side effects of EA, such as the current instantiation of Longtermism and “AI Safety'' have negative effects on community development.

Elaborations on A:

• Posts like “Bycatch”, “Mistakes on road” and “Really, really, hard” seem to suggest serious structural issues and underuse of large numbers of valuable and highly engaged people
• Interactions in meetings with senior people in philanthropy indicates low buy-in: For example, in a private, high-trust meeting, a leader mentions skepticism of EA, and when I ask for elaboration, the leader pauses, visibly shifts uncomfortably in the Zoom screen, and begins slowly, “Well, they spend time in rabbit holes…”. While anecdotal, it also hints perhaps that widespread "data" is not available due to reluctance (to be clear, fear of offending institutions associated with large amounts of funding).

Elaboration on B:

Consider Longtermism and AI as either manifestations or intermediate reasons for these issues:

The value of present instantiations of “Longtermism” and “AI'' is far more modest than they appear. 

This is because they amount to rephrasing of existing ideas and their work usually treads inside a specific circle of competence. This means that no matter how stellar, their activities contribute little to execution of the actual issues.

This is not benign because these activities (unintentionally) are allowing backing in of worldviews that encroach upon the culture and execution of EA in other areas and as a whole. It produces “shibboleths” that run into the teeth of EA’s presentation issues. It also takes attention and interest from under-provisioned cause areas that are esoteric and unpopularized.

Aside: This question would benefit from sketches of solutions and sketches of the counterfactual state of EA. But this isn’t workable as this question is already lengthy, may be contentious, and contains flaws. Another aside: causes are not zero-sum and it is not clear the question contains  a criticism of Longtermism or AI as a concern, even stronger criticism can be consistent with say, ten times current funding.

In your role in setting strategy for Open Philanthropy, will you consider the above premise and the three questions below:

1. To what degree would you agree with the characterizations above or (maybe unfair to ask) similar criticisms?
2. What evidence would cause you to change your mind to the answer to question #1 (e.g. if you believed EA was defective, what would make disprove this in your mind? Or, if you disagreed with the premise, what evidence would be required for you to agree?)
3. If there is a structural issue in EA, and in theory Open Philanthropy could intervene to remedy it, is there any reason that would prevent intervention? For example, from an entity/governance perspective or from a practical perspective?

What are some of the central feedback loops by which people who are hoping to positively influence the long run future can evaluate their efforts? What are some feedback sources that seem underrated, or at least worth further consideration?

What is your process for deciding your high-level goals? What role does explicit prioritization play? What role does gut-level/curiosity-/intuition-driven prioritization play?

Do you (or did you) ever have doubts about whether you were "good enough" to pursue your career?

(Sorry for posting after the deadline - I haven't been on screens recently due to a migraine and just saw it.) 

I think your career story is one of the best examples of not needing formal background/study to do well or become well-versed in multiple EA causes, since from a hedge fund background, you started and led GiveWell, and now you oversee important work across multiple causes with Open Philanthropy. What do you think helped you significantly to learn and achieve these things? Did you have a mindset or mantras you repeated to yourself, or a learning process you followed?

How likely do you think that the amount of funding pledged to be donated to EA causes/projects/orgs will double within the next 5 years, and why?

Here are two other alternative phrasings to the question above:

1. Do you think it is likely that the EA movement will have one or more billionaires whose total planned EA-aligned giving is as high or higher than Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna’s planned amount?
2. How likely it is do you think that the amount of funding that OpenPhil can allocate will double within the next 5 years, and why? Is it a goal of OpenPhil to expand the funding it can grant out?

How much work is going into working out how quickly ($/year) OpenPhil should be spending their money? And does OpenPhil offer any advice to Good Ventures on the money that is being invested as it seems like this is a large variable in the total amount of good OpenPhil / Good Ventures will be able to achieve?