Michael Anissimov posted the following on the SIAI blog:

Thanks to the generosity of two major donors; Jaan Tallinn, a founder of Skype and Ambient Sound Investments, and Edwin Evans, CEO of the mobile applications startup Quinly, every contribution to the Singularity Institute up until January 20, 2011 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to a total of $125,000.

Interested in optimal philanthropy — that is, maximizing the future expected benefit to humanity per charitable dollar spent? The technological creation of greater-than-human intelligence has the potential to unleash an “intelligence explosion” as intelligent systems design still more sophisticated successors. This dynamic could transform our world as greatly as the advent of human intelligence has already transformed the Earth, for better or for worse. Thinking rationally about these prospects and working to encourage a favorable outcome offers an extraordinary chance to make a difference. The Singularity Institute exists to do so through its research, the Singularity Summit, and public education.

We support both direct engagements with the issues as well as the improvements in methodology and rationality needed to make better progress. Through our Visiting Fellows program, researchers from undergrads to Ph.Ds pursue questions on the foundations of Artificial Intelligence and related topics in two-to-three month stints. Our Resident Faculty, up to four researchers from three last year, pursues long-term projects, including AI research, a literature review, and a book on rationality, the first draft of which was just completed. Singularity Institute researchers and representatives gave over a dozen presentations at half a dozen conferences in 2010. Our Singularity Summit conference in San Francisco was a great success, bringing together over 600 attendees and 22 top scientists and other speakers to explore cutting-edge issues in technology and science.

We are pleased to receive donation matching support this year from Edwin Evans of the United States, a long-time Singularity Institute donor, and Jaan Tallinn of Estonia, a more recent donor and supporter. Jaan recently gave a talk on the Singularity and his life at a entrepreneurial group in Finland. Here’s what Jaan has to say about us:

“We became the dominant species on this planet by being the most intelligent species around. This century we are going to cede that crown to machines. After we do that, it will be them steering history rather than us. Since we have only one shot at getting the transition right, the importance of SIAI’s work cannot be overestimated. Not finding any organisation to take up this challenge as seriously as SIAI on my side of the planet, I conclude that it’s worth following them across 10 time zones.”
– Jaan Tallinn, Singularity Institute donor

Make a lasting impact on the long-term future of humanity today — make a donation to the Singularity Institute and help us reach our $125,000 goal. For more detailed information on our projects and work, contact us at institute@intelligence.org or read our new organizational overview.

-----

Kaj's commentary: if you haven't done so recently, do check out the SIAI publications page. There are several new papers and presentations, out of which I thought that Carl Shulman's Whole Brain Emulations and the Evolution of Superorganisms made for particularly fascinating (and scary) reading. SIAI's finally starting to get its paper-writing machinery into gear, so let's give them money to make that possible. There's also a static page about this challenge; if you're on Facebook, please take the time to "like" it there.

(Full disclosure: I was an SIAI Visiting Fellow in April-July 2010.)

Tallinn-Evans $125,000 Singularity Challenge
New Comment
378 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since:
Some comments are truncated due to high volume. (⌘F to expand all)Change truncation settings
[-]Rain720

I just put in 2700 USD, the current balance of my bank account, and I'll find some way to put in more by the end of the challenge.

[-]anonym210

Not that I don't think your donation is admirable, but I'm curious how you are able to donate your entire bank account without running the risk of not being able to respond to a black-swan event appropriately and your future well-being and ability to donate to SIAI being compromised?

Do you think it's rational in general for people to donate all their savings to the SIAI?

[-]Rain460

I have a high limit credit card which I pay off every month, no other form of debt, no expenses until my next paycheck, a very secure, well-paying job with good health insurance, significant savings in the form of stocks and bonds, and several family members and friends who would be willing to help me in the event of some catastrophe.

I prepare and structure my life such that I can take action without fear. I attribute most of this to reading the book Your Money Or Your Life while I was in college. My only regret is that I can afford to give more, but fail to have the cash on hand due to lifestyle expenditures and saving for my own personal future.

[-]anonym140

Thanks for the reply. Bravo on structuring your life the way you have!

3wedrifid
Have a reliable source of income and an overdraft available.
1anonym
I don't think those two alone are sufficient for it to be rational. I work for a mid-sized (in the thousands of employees), very successful, privately held company with a long, stable history, and I feel very secure in my job. I would say I have a reliable source of income, but even so, I wouldn't estimate the probability of finding myself suddenly and unexpectedly out of work in the next year at less than 1%, and if somebody has school loans, a mortgage, etc., then in that situation, it seems more rational to have at least enough cash to stay afloat for a few months or so (or have stocks, etc., that could be sold if necessary) while finding a new job.
5wedrifid
They are sufficient to make the "entire bank account" factor irrelevant and the important consideration the $2,700 as an absolute figure. "Zero" is no longer an absolute cutoff and instead a point at which costs potentially increase.
1anonym
Okay, let's think this through with a particular case. Assume only your two factors: John has a reliable source of income and overdraft protection on an account. Since you assert that those two factors are sufficient, we can suppose John doesn't have any line of credit, doesn't own anything valuable that could be converted to cash, doesn't know anybody that could give him a loan or a job, etc John donates all his savings, and loses his job the next day. He has overdraft protection on his empty bank account, which will save him from some fees when he starts bouncing checks, but the overdraft protection will expire pretty quickly once checks start bouncing. Things will spiral out of control quickly unless John is able to get another source of income sufficient to cover his recurring expenses or there is some other compensating factor than the two you mentioned (which shows they are not sufficient). Or do you think he's doing okay a month later when the overdraft protection is no longer in effect, he has tons of bills due, needs to pay his rent, still hasn't found a job, has run out of food, etc.? And if he hasn't found work within a few months more -- which is quite possible -- he'll be evicted from his home and his credit will be ruined from not having paid any of his bills for several months. ETA: the point isn't that all of that will happen or is even likely to happen, but that a bank account represents some amount of time that the person can stay afloat while they're looking for work. It greatly increases the likelihood that they will find a new source of income before they hit the catastrophe point of being evicted and having their credit ruined.
4Alicorn
It looks to me like you're ignoring the "reliable" bit in "reliable source of income".
2wnoise
There's no such thing as "reliable" at that level.
-2anonym
No, I'm not. I'm assuming that even if one has a reliable source of income, one still might lose that source of income. Maybe you're interpreting 'reliable' as 'certain' or something very close to that. To give some numbers, I would consider a source for which there is a 1% to 3% chance of losing it within 1 year as a reliable source, and my point remains that in that situation, with no other compensating factors than overdraft protection on a bank account, it is not rational to donate all your savings to charity.
2shokwave
And so John bets his current lifestyle that he won't lose his job. That bet looks like: 97%: SIAI gets 2700 dollars. (27 utils) 3%: SIAI gets 2700 dollars, hardship for John. (neg 300 utils) The bet you're recommending is: 97%: Savings continue to grow (1 util) 3%: Savings wiped out to prevent hardship for John. (0 util) The first bet comes out at E(util): 17.19, the second at 0.97 utils. You need to be very very risk-averse for the second option to be preferable. So risk-averse that I would not consider you rational (foregoing 16.22 utils to avoid a 3% chance of neg 300 utils?)
6randallsquared
Er, you've implied the level of risk aversion by assigning utils, so of course it would be irrational to act more risk averse than John actually is, but it's a weird way to phrase it. If John were more risk averse, the utils for hardship might be considerably lower.
0shokwave
Assuming we can speak cardinally of utility, John has to value his hardship as 33 times as bad as SIAI getting money is good for the first bet not to come out positive at all. If John cares not one whit for the SIAI that makes sense. If John is a codeword for the case that started this discussion that doesn't make sense. Maybe I should have just made my point with the ratios.
-1anonym
I think most people would evaluate the hardship of having their credit ruined and being evicted as far greater than 33 times as bad as SIAI getting money (or SIAI getting money in 1 year when a 6-month cash reserve safety net has been built up). Also, it's actually greater than 33 times, because you also have to include the probability that they won't get another income source before they hit the catastrophe point, but even including that, I think most people would rate their life being ruined as orders of magnitude more negative utils than SIAI getting the donation is positive utils. John is definitely not the case that started this discussion. My entire point is that Rain has a bunch of other compensating factors, which one could easily argue make it rational in that case. The issue under debate is whether somebody with none of those addtional compensating factors that Rain has would be rational to do the same, given just a reliable source of income and overdraft protection.
2paulfchristiano
If you are a consequentialist and decide that donating $10,000 to SIAI is a good idea, then you already believe the benefit of $10,000 of the SIAI's work significantly exceeds the benefit of saving the life of a child in the developing world. So now, would you say it is obvious that being evicted is 33 times worse than letting a child die because they lack basic medical care? Would you have even a handful of children die so that you can keep your credit rating? I don't know. I am pretty unconvinced that the SIAI will this much good in the world, but I would not call someone irrational if they risked everything they had to help ameliorate abject poverty and I would not necessarily call someone irrational if they believed that working on AI was more important than saving or improving lives directly.
2anonym
To answer your questions, I don't think it's obvious that being evicted is 33 times worse than letting a child die (ignoring that the original question was about $2700, not $10,000), but it might actually turn out to be the case, since if somebody is evicted and has their credit ruined (and by hypothesis has none of the oher safeguards), it's quite possible that they will never recover, and thus will never be financially secure enough to make future donations of vastly more consequence than the difference between a large donation now and a large donation in 1 year (after they've established an emergency fund). I think the question is really whether it's rational to donate all your savings now (if you have no reliable way of handling the unexpected case of losing your income source). Doing so greatly increases the probability of a personal catastrophe that one might not properly recover from. A more rational alternative, I would submit, is to donate a smaller amount now, while continuing to save until you have a sufficient emergency fund, and then donate more at that point. It is more rational, I believe, because the end results are quite similar (the same amount donated over the long term), but the personal risk (and the risk of not being able to make future donations) is greatly lessened.
0[anonymous]
I would call someone irrational if they risked a significant part of their potential future income (donations) to help ameliorate poverty, or help SIAI, immediately. Altruists need to look out for themselves.
0shokwave
My apologies. I didn't check the ancestors. I would note that wedrifid's comment can be repaired with "sufficiently" in front of reliable.
1anonym
I think the rational "fix" is to make sure you can stay afloat for at least a few months if a catastrophe happens. That is also the standard advice of every financial planning book I've ever read. And a Google search finds plenty of sites like: http://www.mainstreet.com/article/moneyinvesting/savings/how-much-should-you-save-rainy-day I'd like to see somebody find a financial advice site or book that says you can periodically wipe out your sayings if you have a reliable source of income and overdraft protection on the empty account (and no other compensating factors, to beat the dead horse). Sometimes it amazes me the things that people on LW will argue for just for the sake of argument.
0shokwave
I may be motivated to argue the point because I just recently wiped out my savings to purchase a car and an amp - and I don't have any overdraft, or even a credit card.
0wedrifid
To be honest that is what I saw you doing, hence the disengagement.
0anonym
Hmm, I thought I was correcting an obvious error you made, and I expected you to immediately explain what you really meant or add some extra condition or retract your claim, and then we would have been done with the discussion.
0Rain
When the question boils down to, "should someone with completely different circumstances do the exact same thing?", my guess is the answer will typically be, "no." I challenge most hypotheticals by pointing out my method of averting crises: I build the appropriate circumstances such that the conflict will not occur.
2wnoise
The question, of course comes down to what utils are reasonable to assign. I too could choose numbers that would make either option look better than the other. There's also a wide range of available options between the two extremes you consider, and risk aversion should make one of them preferable..
0gwern
Yeah; I would think that generic health problems alone would be in that area of probability.
[-]Rain160

I just put in another 850 USD.

7wedrifid
Wow. I'm impressed. This kind of gesture brings back memories of parable that still prompts a surge of positive affect in me, that of the widow donating everything she had (Mark 12:40-44). It also flagrantly violates related hyperbolic exhortation "do not let the left hand know what the right hand is doing". Since that is message that I now dismiss as socially, psychologically and politically naive your public your public declaration seems beneficial. There are half a dozen factors of influence that you just invoked and some of them I can feel operating on myself even now.
3gwern
/munches popcorn
3tammycamp
Bravo! That's hardcore. Way to pay it forward! Tammy

I just wrote a check for $13,200.

9Costanza
As I write, this comment has earned only 5 karma points (one of them mine). According to Larks' exchange rate of $32 dollars to one karma point, this donation has more than four hundred upvotes to go. Wait ... I assume you're planning to actually mail the check too?

Wait ... I assume you're planning to actually mail the check too?

Yes, I mailed the check, too, just after writing the comment. (And I wrote and mailed it to SIAI. No tricks, it really is a donation.)

I would be surprised if karma scaled linearly with dollars over that range.

And to encourage others to donate, let it be known that I just made a 500 euro (about 655 USD) donation.

[-][anonymous]490

I sent 500 USD.

$500. I can wait a little longer to get a new laptop.

[-]Kutta490

I sent 640 dollars.

640 dollars ought to be enough for anyone :-)

0[anonymous]
640k, perhaps. :-)

$100 from a poor college student. I can't not afford it.

[-]ata430

I donated $100 yesterday. I hope to donate more by the end of the matching period, but for now that's around my limit (I don't have much money).

I put in $500, really pinches in Indian rupees (Rs. 23,000+). Hoping for the best to happen next year with a successful book release and promising research to be done.

[-]Larks360

On the one hand, I absolutly abhore SIAI. On the other hand, I'd love to turn my money into karma...

/joke

$100

7Larks
At the moment, my comment has 15 karma, while Leonhart's, which was posted before, and for more money, has 14. As £1 = $1.5, $32 = 1 karma, and thus my donation is only worth around 3 karma. So it seems my joke must have been worth 12 karma, or $386. I never realised my comparative advantage was in humour...
7[anonymous]
I imagine karma and donation amounts, if they correlate at all, correlate on a log scale. We'd therefore expect your comment to get 14/log(300 x 1.5) x log(100) karma from the donation amount alone, which comes to about 10.5 karma. Therefore 4.5 of your karma came from your joke. Unfortunately, we can't convert your joke karma into dollars in any consistent way. But if you hadn't donated any money, and made an equally good joke, you would have gotten about as much karma as someone donating $7, assuming our model holds up in that range. Edit: also a factor is that I'm sure many people on LessWrong don't actually know the conversion factor between $ and £.

£300.

I just donated $1,370. The reason why it's not a round number is interesting, and I'll write a Discussion post about it in a minute. EDIT: Here it is.

Also, I find it interesting that (before my donation) the status bar for the challenge was at $8,500, and the donations mentioned here totaled (by my estimation) about $6,700 of that...

I seem to remember reading a comment saying that if I make a small donation now, it makes it more likely I'll make a larger donation later, so I just donated £10.

Ben Franklin effect, as well as consistency bias. Good on you for turning a bug into a feature.

2timtyler
Does that still work, once you know about the sunk cost fallacy?
2Perplexed
Perhaps it works due to warm-and-fuzzy slippery slopes, rather than sunk costs.
1Paul Crowley
Don't know - I guess we'll find out!
[-]Furcas290

Donated $500 CAD just now.

By the way, SIAI is still more than 31,000 US dollars away from its target.

Donation made. Here's to optimal philanthropy!

Happy Holidays,

Tammy

$1,000

I just donated $512.

Donated $120

[-]Benquo270

Darn it; I j just made my annual donation a few days ago, but hopefully my employer's matching donation will come in during the challenge period. I will make sure to make my 2011 donation during the matching period (i.e. well before January 20th), in an amount no less than $1000.

5Benquo
Followed up today with my 2011 donation.
3wedrifid
Whoops. The market just learned.
4Rain
You can't time the market. The accepted strategy in a state of uncertainty is continuous, automatic investment. That's why I have a monthly donation set up, in addition to giving extra during matching periods.
5Benquo
The matching donor presumably wants the match to be used. So unless the match is often exhausted and I'd be displacing someone else's donation that would only be given if there were a match, it's in no one's interest (who supports the cause) to try to outsmart or prevent a virtuous cycle of donations. And there are generally just 2 states, a 1 for 1 match and a 0 for 1 match, so in the worst case, you can always save up your annual donations, and give them on December 31st if no match is forthcoming. That said, if I weren't using credit to give, I'd use your system.
0wedrifid
You are referring to a general principle that has slightly negative relevance in this instance.
[-]Kyre250

$1000 - looking forward to a good year for SIAI in 2011.

Wow, SIAI has succeeded in monetizing Less Wrong by selling karma points. This is either a totally awesome blunder into success or sheer Slytherin genius.

Just donated $200.

$50 - it's definitely a different cause to the usual :)

I have donated a small amount of money.

The Singularity is now a little bit closer and safer because of your efforts. Thank you. We will send a receipt for your donations and our newsletter at the end of the year. From everyone at the Singularity Institute – our deepest thanks.

I do hope they mean they will send a receipt and newsletter by e-mail, and not by physical mail.

-2David_Gerard
I understood that this was considered pointless hereabouts: that the way to effective charitable donation is to pick the most effective charity and donate your entire charity budget to it. Thus, the only appropriate donations to SIAI would be nothing or everything. Or have I missed something in the chain of logic? (This is, of course, from the viewpoint of the donor rather than that of the charity.) Edit: Could the downvoter please explain? I am not at all personally convinced by that Slate story, but it really is quite popular hereabouts.

I feel rather uncomfortable at seeing someone mention that he donated, and getting a response which indirectly suggests that he's being irrational and should have donated more.

5shokwave
It is indirect, but I believe David is trying to highlight the possibility of problems with the Slate article. Once we have something to protect (a donor) we will be more motivated to explore its possible failings instead of taking it as gospel.
1David_Gerard
I don't think that, as I have noted. I'm not at all keen on the essay in question. But it is popular hereabouts.
0Kaj_Sotala
Okay, good. But it still kinda comes off that way, at least to me.

The idea is that the optimal method of donation is to donate as much as possible to one charity. Splitting your donations between charities is less effective, but still benefits each. They actually have a whole page about how valuable small donations are, so I doubt they'd hold a grudge against you for making one.

-1David_Gerard
Yes, I'm sure the charity has such a page. I am intimately familiar with how splitting donations into fine slivers is very much in the interests of all charities except the very largest; I was speaking of putative benefit to the donors.

Actions which increase utility but do not maximise it aren't "pointless". If you have two charities to choose from, £100 to spend, and you get a constant 2 utilons/£ for charity A and 1 utilon/£ for charity B, you still get a utilon for each pound you donate to B, even if to get 200 utilons you should donate £100 to A. It's just the wrong word to apply to the action, even assuming that someone who says he's donated a small amount is also saying that he's donated a small proportion of his charitable budget (which it turns out wasn't true in this case).