Edit: See ea.domains for an updated list and a form to add your own!
I heard about a recent case of a relevant domain being squatted, and figured that the people who buy up domains then sell them at a markup might start to notice the growth of interest in AI x-risk and claim some domains which would otherwise host good projects. I've bought the following, and will make them available for use by anyone[1] in the x-risk community.
Domains
aisafety.global - Conference?
aisafety.careers - 80k said they were happy for others to join the space
alignment.careers
alignment.academy - Training program?
alignment.courses - List of all training programs (using Stampy answer as backend)?
aisafety.ventures - Entrepreneurs org?
aisafety.fund - AIS-specific funding org?
aisafety.foundation
aisafety.institute
xrisk.fund
xrisk.foundation
agisafety.info - Useful if we fall back to AGI Safety
agisafety.xyz
aisafety.coach - More orgs in the direction of AI Safety Support?
aisafety.dev
aisafety.network - Peer-to-peer researchers something?
aisafety.quest - Project Eurler for AIS?
agisafety.quest
aisafety.world
alignment.fyi
alignment.plus
agisafety.wiki - alt. Stampy's Wiki branding?
alignment.wiki
aisafety.observer
aisafety.group
Others (see links for handover conditions)
x-risks.com - Drew Spartz
effectivealtruism.money - Dony Christie, he might have a use for
effectivealtruism.capital - Dony Christie, he might have a use for
effectivealtruism.plus - Dony Christie
effectivealtruism.ventures - Dony Christie
This cost ~$200 of personal funds for the first year, and closer to $500/y going forward as the onboarding discounts wear off. I estimate saving one or two wanted domains from being squatted and the hassle / cost of acquiring it or moving to a worse domain would make this worthwhile for several years, so this seems probably positive EV.
The main downside risk would be from people who want these domains not knowing they're available, so I have forwarded all of these domains to my home page. Hopefully people who want them will check there to track me down and request them. This is not perfect, but seems better than waiting for them to be sniped.
If you would like to list your own available relevant domains in the comments that would be welcome, I'll add them to this post and the LW cross-post.
- ^
I will point them towards the servers of anyone who claims to have a half decent plan for the domain, and hand over the domain fully if they build something which seems useful.
Relevant domains I own that I'm basically (anti-)squatting until a great use is found by myself or others:
The first two are pretty relevant to my work on impact markets, so I will want to see a case for more relevant usage of the name before handing them off.
Hah, kudos!
Thanks for doing this!
I also have x-risks.com and may or may not use it, so feel free to DM me if you have a creative use case for it.
I'm slapping myself on the forehead for not thinking of this earlier, especially after seeing what happened to ea.org. We should do this for other cause areas too. And some funder should give you a retroactive grant for this or buy the domains from you.
Wait, why have we not tried to buy ea.org?
I heard CEA offered them $10k and they refused to sell it.
I'd be very happy to make this a general index of domains, and update with ones from other cause areas. And I'd be happy to accept retrofunding for this or my other (currently self-funded) AI x-risk projects from anyone who wants to encourage me, though I'd ask that it be directed towards one of my existing grantees rather than myself for tax efficiency.
There are a couple of ea.something domains which look potentially great, though they tend to be premium ones so would rapidly increase the burn rate of this project. Can scale it up if wanted.
Note, you probably don't have to pay the full renewal fee on an ongoing basis, you can just transfer the domains to another registrar, who wont charge so much. Presumably they're legally obligated to let you do that and they just pray that suits don't realize this for as long as possible.
I think I can cut it down a little by moving to Google domains, but Namecheap have introductory offers which I'm not sure kick in when you transfer domains? Worth looking into when the year rolls around though.