Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Thoughts on this $16.7M "AI safety" grant?, published by defun on July 16, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

Open Philanthropy has recommended a total of $16.7M to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to support research led by Neil Thompson on modeling the trends and impacts of AI and computing.

2020 - MIT - AI Trends and Impacts Research - $550,688

2022 - MIT - AI Trends and Impacts Research - $13,277,348

2023 - MIT - AI Trends and Impacts Research - $2,911,324

I've read most of their research, and I don't understand why Open Philanthropy thinks this is a good use of their money.

Thompson's Google Scholar here.

Thompson's most cited paper "The Computational Limits of Deep Learning" (2020)

@gwern pointed out some flaws on Reddit.

Thompson's latest paper "A Model for Estimating the Economic Costs of Computer Vision Systems that use Deep Learning" (2024)

This paper has many limitations (as acknowledged by the author) and from an x-risks point of view, this paper seems irrelevant.

What do you think about Open Philanthropy recommending a total of $16.7M for this work?

Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org