I also thought so, not just because of Russian x5 decrease or because some people here can donate millions unlike me.
But because I have much more knowledge about AI and all other things than average person. And... Probably smarter than average person?
So, it is quite clear that my edge is some personal work, not money. But what work? Politics certainly isn't my strongest side, I am afraid I will make it worse. I doubt technical alignment makes sense since how little time is left. And also I am not actually a mathematician, or, say, biologist. So I don't know how I should apply my time.
If the issue is just location, you can use a VPN (your browser may already have one) to make it look like you're somewhere else.
My go-to recommendation is the Long-term Future Foundation, who fund a bunch of research. But if you want to fund political action, I like CESIA and ControlAI, but it looks like both are kinda hard to donate to as well.
Long-term Future Foundation
I think you mean “Long-Term Future Fund”, and seems like it’s shutting down, with the following suggested replacements:
While LTFF is closing, note that EA Funds has launched a new fund, called the Transformative AI Fund (TAIF), with a large overlap in scope, funding early-stage projects that reduce risks from powerful AI systems, led by Lowe Lundin. It is open for applications and donations now. Some LTFF Fund managers plan to continue part-time grantmaking via the AI Risk Mitigation Fund and Lightcone Commons.
At this late stage, research is unlikely to save us in time. I strongly recommend funding political action. ControlAI is probably the most effective group in terms of making your dollar go the furthest. Unfortunately, AFAIK they only accept institutional-scale donations.
More generally, if you're going to fund technical research it's very very important to be particularly careful about which institutions/individuals/projects you donate to. There's a long track record of 'alignment' projects ending up unlocking huge capabilities advancements.
Yeah, it bothered me to, ever since 2023 I doubted it actually makes sense to donate MIRI or try to apply as alignment researcher, because there is just so little time left. And then I found out that MIRI mostly stopped all the research. Exactly because of those reasons. And pivoted to political action because it seemed that normal people notice the AI and are more sane about it's dangers than tech bros.
But even so, EY still named "Superbabies" as third most important project on the planet. And recently I saw the post saying that gene therapy for intelligence enhancement in babies is worthy to do just because alignment won't work with no pause either, and if we do have 30-50 years, then baby gene therapy is just vastly under researched and under funded in comparison with eg alignment, so even little addings can be vast marginal improvements. So maybe I shouldn't try to donate on AI either in technical or political sense, but in those. But I don't know how to donate for those.
I know at least about examples of OpenAI, Anthropic. (In some sense Deep Mind.) Though iirc EY was saying that OpenAI and Anthropic are terrible ideas from the very beginning. I heard iirc EY saying in interview some time ago that there is only one organization except his MIRI which actually has positive impact on ai/makes real alignment - Redwood research. But I am not sure how to donate to them, whether they still have positive impact and whether technical donations are worth in comparison to political.
Um. No, obviously not just ip is the problem? Stats show that more every third Russian (including kids and elderly) regularly use VPN. I personally just don't turn it off, since the moment when YouTube was blocked (also Facebook, Twitter, medium are blocked too, most ai services not accessible). So, not, it isn't a question of vpn.
Russia is under sanctions, swift doesn't work, Russian cards are not accepted for payments. There were ways around it for a long time, like applying for a card of foreign bank (usually you need to, like, sent a copy of your international passport via the post and pay around 500$ dollars just to make it, which for a Russian is as expensive as 2500$ for an American). There are gift card, usually connected to Google pay to hide the fishy payment card from the one who accepts the payments. And there are prepaid virtual cards (usually you pay crypto) which sometimes even elegible for cashing out in ATMs.
But... I am not even sure about the legal status of all that. And even if it is technically legal, I don't want to make problems for charities by donating 100$ from Russia in some weird way.
Though iirc donations in crypto from Russia are perfectly OK - sometimes sites display wrongly without the VPN, but it isn't any legal obstacle. But some sites like iirc MIRI use mechanisms like coinbase, and coinbase doesn't serve clients in Russia.
Update: I am very surprised by +14. I almost never get anything even close. And I thought this post was quite bad. Bad writing. Plus I fumbled the formating. And I didn't set any tags. I didn't even check whether I am right and MIRI still have a problem. Or research the legal status of gift/prepaid cards via Google pay and whether Google pay works for donations at all.
In "If anyone builds it, everyone dies" Yudkowsky and Soares say that you even can pay for AI models if you donate on AI safety more then on them every time you pay.
Buy I didn't find anywhere where they say where to donate. Best thing I have done by now is bought the Russian version of the book to myself and gave money to one my interested relative to buy it.
Last time I did the usual monthly donations, I didn't find a way to donate to MIRI and ended up donating to something non AI just to not end up not donating at all. (problem with miri was iirc something like that they need to sign into coinbase to donate or something, and coinbase is not accessible in Russia)
Note:
I am from Russia.
Which means that I need some way that works from Russia. I have crypto (no foreign accounts). And a Google pay working abroad.
And also that I am from Russia me as that all the prices are generally lower here, ~5 times, so don't expect I will donate a lot, not even around 500$/month, but more around 100$/month. So, I guess, consider whether the advice to me even worths spent time on it.