This is a linkpost for https://jaan.online/philanthropy/#2021-results-success
Thanks for your philanthropy! Random question on the topic—I saw on your site that you’re a fan of funding altruistic software projects, and I’m wondering what your stance is on open sourcing/creating more/better public domain software (Wikipedia is a prime example, for instance). On the one hand I could see it improving civilizational resilience, on the other hand there’s always a potential for misuse and dangerous applications (possible example might be training AI with public domain source code or something). Do you have any particular opinions on the subject?
sure, this is always a consideration. i'd even claim that the "wait.. what about the negative side effects?" question is a potential expected value spoiler for pretty much all longtermist interventions (because they often aim for effects that are multiple causal steps down the road), and as such not really specific to software.
to follow up my philantropic pledge from 2020, i've updated my philanthropy page with 2021 results.
in 2021 i made $22M worth of endpoint grants — exceeding my commitment of $14.4M (20k times $718.11 — the minimum price of ETH in 2021). notes: