I understand the current scheme is that funders “commit” money, i.e. promise to donate them in the future. Can’t they instead donate money upfront so it sits somewhere in a bank account / in index funds, until it’s time to spend it? That way it won’t disappear if their business crashes.
This is plausibly worth pursuing, but right now my understanding is that the only billionaires funding AI safety were equity billionaires, meaning that if they tried to sell all their equity at once then the sell offers would outnumber ordinary trading by orders of magnitude, crashing the stock and preventing them from getting much money even if they did manage to sell all of it.
tl;dr unless they’re somehow billionaires in cash or really liquid assets, they always need to sell gradually.
I thought that’s kinda the point that the money is at this moment fictional… and it depends on luck whether it ever becomes real money (like, possibly yes, but also possibly no)… so the spending strategy should acknowledge this fact.
For example, we should not think about $1M of fictional money as having $1M real money, but maybe as having $300K real money (adjust the ratio based on previous experience).
I understand the current scheme is that funders “commit” money, i.e. promise to donate them in the future. Can’t they instead donate money upfront so it sits somewhere in a bank account / in index funds, until it’s time to spend it? That way it won’t disappear if their business crashes.
This is plausibly worth pursuing, but right now my understanding is that the only billionaires funding AI safety were equity billionaires, meaning that if they tried to sell all their equity at once then the sell offers would outnumber ordinary trading by orders of magnitude, crashing the stock and preventing them from getting much money even if they did manage to sell all of it.
tl;dr unless they’re somehow billionaires in cash or really liquid assets, they always need to sell gradually.
I thought that’s kinda the point that the money is at this moment fictional… and it depends on luck whether it ever becomes real money (like, possibly yes, but also possibly no)… so the spending strategy should acknowledge this fact.
For example, we should not think about $1M of fictional money as having $1M real money, but maybe as having $300K real money (adjust the ratio based on previous experience).