I expect that for most people, starting a new for-profit (or non-profit) AI alignment organization is likely to be net-negative for AI x-risk, even if you have the best of intentions. It's really easy to end up doing capabilities work and contributing to general hype by accident.
I think the benefit of donating to other organizations (now or later) depends pretty heavily on which organizations you're talking about. There are lots of organizations doing some potentially great work (some overviews here and here), some of which are definitely looking for funding. But evaluating each project or organization's quality, likelihood of making a positive impact, and need for funding can be pretty challenging, especially if you're doing it on your own.
You might be interested in donating to or becoming a grant-maker for the Survival and Flourishing Fund or Lightspeed grants, or even funding Lightcone directly. MIRI and ARC seem like some of the safest choices if you want to ensure that your donations are not net-negative, though I don't think either of them are particularly funding-constrained at the moment.
I expect that for most people, starting a new for-profit (or non-profit) AI alignment organization is likely to be net-negative for AI x-risk
While there are some examples of this, such as OpenAI, I still find this claim to be rather bold. If no one was starting AI alignment orgs we would still have roughly the same capabilities today, but only a fraction of the alignment research. Right now, over a hundred times more money is spent on advancing AI compared to reducing risks, so even a company spending half their resources advancing capabilites, and half on...
General Case
Let's say I currently have 1M USD, and I can either:
1. Donate it to orgs working on AI alignment.
2. Invest the money and get returns >> than the stock market.
How big must the expected return of my investment be in what time frame for it to be better than donating right away?
My specific Case
I recently made around 1M USD pre tax, and consider how to best utilize it to decrease AI X-risk. I consider these two options:
In both cases, 10% of the money is fun money/cover living expenses.
Let's say I hypothetically expect to make 10x returns after 5 years on the additional investments into for-profit in scenario 2, would that be a worthy investment?
I do realize that 10x in 5 years might seem unrealistic, but for the sake of discussion I think it is a useful figure, however wrong it might seem.
My Own Estimate
Donating 1 usd today, corresponds roughly to donating (adjusted for inflation):
1.18 usd in one year
1.39 usd in two years
2.39 usd in five years
This is based on a timeline of getting AGI in 15 years, and I simply played around with numbers and this seemed reasonable. I know "playing with numbers" is not a reliable approach, but I haven't come up with anything better, hence the post here.