Now the post is updated with 2024 numbers :)

I didn't include Longview Philanthropy because they're a smaller funder and a lot of their funding seems to come from Open Philanthropy. There is a column called "Other" that serves as a catch-all for any funders I left out.

I took a look at Founder's Pledge but their donations don't seem that relevant to AI safety to me.

Do you think wild animals such as tuna and deer are a good option too since they probably have a relatively high standard of living compared to farmed animals?

LTFF, LessWrong.

I've never heard this idea proposed before so it seems novel and interesting.

As you say in the post, the AI risk movement could gain much more awareness by associating itself with the climate risk advocacy movement which is much larger. Compute is arguably the main driver of AI progress, compute is correlated with energy usage, and energy use generally increases carbon emissions so limiting carbon emissions from AI is an indirect way of limiting the compute dedicated to AI and slowing down the AI capabilities race.

This approach seems viable in the near future until innovations in energy technology (e.g. nuclear fusion) weaken the link between energy production and CO2 emissions, or algorithmic progress reduces the need for massive amounts of compute for AI.

The question is whether this indirect approach would be more effective than or at least complementary to a more direct approach that advocates explicit compute limits and communicates risks from misaligned AI.

A recent survey of AI alignment researchers found that the most common opinion on the statement "Current alignment research is on track to solve alignment before we get to AGI" was "Somewhat disagree". The same survey found that most AI alignment researchers also support pausing or slowing down AI progress.

Slowing down AI progress might be net-positive if you take ideas like longtermism seriously but it seems challenging to do given the strong economic incentives to increase AI capabilities. Maybe government policies to limit AI progress will eventually enter the Overton window when AI reaches a certain level of dangerous capability.

This is a cool project! Thanks for making it. Hopefully it makes the book more accessible.

Update: the UK government has announced £8.5 million in AI safety funding for systematic AI safety and these grants will probably be distributed in 2025.

Thanks for writing this! It's interesting to see how MATS has evolved over time. I like all the quantitative metrics in the post as well.