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Comment by idlewords | Hacker News Reader

Scroll to the end. This is a $30M grant to the guy's roommate and future brother-in-law.

Unbelievable.

I scrolled to the end and can see why someone would question that. But framing it as a personal grant is misleading. If we're going to keep telling users that on HN we want them to make substantive points thoughtfully and apply the principle of charity, it's only fair to say so here as well. We like pith, but fairness more.

(In case anyone is curious, I don't know anything about the story; I just saw it on HN.)

I don't think the principle of charity applies when someone is making foundation grants to benefit their close relatives and roommates. The principle of shenanigans kicks in.

Do you/YC have any personal or financial connection to the "Open Philanthropy Project"? Just curious.

I don't, and only hear of these things when they show up on HN. No idea about YC but I doubt it.

On the other side, OpenAI was previously also funded by YC: http://blog.ycombinator.com/openai/

Thanks.

I don't know if this counts, but YC funds the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours. CEA, 80k, and OPP are all part of the "effective altruism" ecosystem, and it is not hard to find personal connections between them. (For example, CEA recently launched "EA Funds", which are managed by employees of OPP.)

The connection is not direct. There may be more direct connections between YC and OPP, but I am not aware of any.

Here's the other perspective – if I'm working at Open Philanthropy, I'd be wanting to get to know people who run organizations I'm likely to be really interested in.

So, it's natural that I'd be expecting there's a high chance I'd want to give to the organization they work at later on.

Just because someone has a personal connection doesn't mean it's a bad use of money – it indicates it's worth asking the question, but just because there's personal connection doesn't make it "unbelievable."

Also - not just his roommate and future brother-in-law. Also a project funded by Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, etc. Seems pretty damn reasonable to think they would've evaluated OpenAI for a grant regardless of the personal relationships.

Hater News at its best.

It is pretty unbelievable, since it's not true. The actual quote:

>OpenAI researchers Dario Amodei and Paul Christiano are both technical advisors to Open Philanthropy and live in the same house as Holden. In addition, Holden is engaged to Dario’s sister Daniela.

His roommates/sister's fiancé work there. That's all.

Holden is engaged to the sister of the guy he is funding. Hence, "future brother-in-law".

"Running an organization" is not the same thing as "owning an organization". Maybe at a company the CEO might have shares, but there's no equivalent at a non-profit. It's just a job that pays below market rates. If money was the goal, there's a plethora of readily-available much-higher-value opportunities that won't get sneering Internet comments.

That's not a response to my comment.

You said "sister's fiancé", which is backwards.

Fair enough, but it doesn't make much difference.

idlewords, this comment has tremendous negative utility for humanity. By pointing out obvious nepotism and corruption in the AI risk charity field, you make people less likely to donate in the future, thus increasing the likelihood of a takeover from the robots. You must delete this comment; the fate of the world depends on it!

I'll believe it when I hear it from a future superintelligence that has pre-committed to simulating 3^^^^^3 copies of me.

By the time a simulation of you hears that it will already be too late.

To the company that his roommate works for as a researcher. The way you're phrasing it is pretty misleading.

Two of his roommates.

I don't see this as a problem. If I had tons of money and knew someone (by any connection) who was doing amazing work I would definitely chip in.

It's not his money, though. Also, when you invest in your friend's business, you don't get to deduct that in your taxes.

It's not a business, it's a non profit founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and others, with $1 billion in committments to funding.

How is this controversial? Just because some people know each other?

Not american, but it seems like you have some information that you should contribute to your country's tax collection agency. I'm sure they would be grateful.

It's not Holden's money - he works for OPP, he doesn't fund it. The money comes from Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, and it's already in a trust.

Yes, that's what I wrote.

I want to make sure I fully understand the accusation here.

You're saying that the Open Philanthropy Fund - which is funded by an $8.3 billion grant from Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, also close associates - is funneling $30M money to an organization that pays below market rates (https://www.quora.com/What-is-compensation-like-at-the-non-p...), run by people who have dedicated their professional careers and millions of dollars to philanthropic causes despite being surrounded by way more lucrative opportunities for anyone with their skillsets.

If this were the scheme, there are countless better ways to do it.

They could just give them the money without any pretense. Dustin and Cari didn't have to tie up this money in OPP. They could have skipped the years of working with Holden and others for years to identify the best giving opportunities, avoided any blowback, and just used their money the way every other billionaire does. Or, instead of just giving it away, they could have made him an absurdly compensated CEO of a new startup.

And none of that would have attracted any attention, no sneering condemnation, just business as usual.

But that's not what they did.

They've spent years painstakingly identifying the best causes they could find - anti-malarial nets, poverty relief via direct cash transfers, biosecurity, intestinal work treatment, Schistosomiasis, prison reform, and yes, AI safety. They've oriented their entire lives around this project, so of course many of the people they're close to are working on similar projects. So it really, really shouldn't be a shocking twist that one of the people they're close to might be in a position to use a small fraction of their available funds for a lot of potential good. There are fewer than 100 people working full-time on AI safety today. If you've concluded that it's an important cause area, there really aren't many options.

And even then, they didn't have to disclose their personal connection. They really could have just left well enough alone. But because they're dedicated to transparency even in the face of stupidity, they made their personal connection prominent and obvious. So now anyone on the Internet can cruise on by and - ignoring the millions donated to third-world poverty and health causes, ignoring the multitude of ways the money could have been quietly and selfishly used, ignoring the fact that non-profits invariably pay below-market rates, ignoring the copious public writing and research that's gone into these decisions - can simply gawk and say "unbelievable".

When people say "No good deed goes unpunished", this is what they're talking about.

You make a lot of points. For the moment I'll take issue with only one of them. You claim OpenAI is "an organization that pays below market rates", and give a link to support your claim. The first thing in that link is "OpenAI compensation is similar to industry compensation.", which means it's basically "market rate". Later that link says "OpenAI does not pay absolute top of market", but arguing from that sentence that OpenAI doesn't pay market rate is like saying for example Apple doesn't pay market rates because there's a hedge fund which pays more.

So I believe the source you cited indicates the opposite of what you claim it does.

I don't know - it certainly seems to me that this seriously tarnishes the credibility of Give Well, whose stated aim is to improve everyone's (not just Dustin's) charitable resource allocation.

The likelihood that this $30m is the best possible use of that money? It just happens to be that this personal connection occurs by chance? Pretty much zero. Of course all opportunities in life are down to your network, but this is pretty cut-and-dry nepotism.

If this were a totally unrelated personal investment by Dustin in a friend, it would not be seen as problematic. By investing through these supposedly impartial organisations that aim to influence everyone's behaviour, their credibility in this mission is clearly harmed.

(At least this my initial response, while allowing that this may change if a more detailed analysis shows this to be misplaced. But without this expression of mistrust, such an analysis is highly unlikely to take place, and I do not immediately see how it could fully alleviate this concern)

This personal connection did not occur by chance, but the causality you assign is reversed. Holden did not support OpenAI because his housemates work there. Rather, it is because of their similar worldviews that they live together in the first place. It is unsurprising that people who think safe AGI is a critically important investment end up in the same social circle.

Holden isn't an AGI researcher though, he's a person who's made his name arguing that some charities are much more efficient uses of money than others. Indeed when asked to review the Singularity Institute, as well as criticising the organisation itself he gave long and detailed arguments why he didn't think unfriendly AGI was a threat, was sceptical about trying to combat it through AI research and dismissed the general form of arguments about the crucial importance of donating to it as "Pascal's mugging". At best you could say he was more open-minded towards the possibility his mind might be changed on the issue than the average person.

It would be difficult to imagine that two people with very close relationships to him working for OpenAI haven't influenced his apparent change of heart; whether they've converted him to the cause by sheer force of intellectual argument or not it doesn't look great.

So holding a similar world view is enough for me to get a $30m investment to pursue research? No; holding a similar world view, being friends with, and having familial ties. This is the definition of nepotism.

Otherwise a large percentage of Hacker News should now be expecting similar investments to pursue research projects.

Look, I do not really care if somebody rich invests in somebody they know. But I do now doubt GiveWell's impartiality of analysis in other instances, and general good judgement. I will not be using their judgement to inform my charitable giving.

This isn't a GiveWell rec, it's an OPP grant. OPP literally exists to give away Dustin's money.

Go to OPP's (or Good Ventures') site and notice the glaring lack of a donate button.

"The Open Philanthropy Project is a collaboration between Good Ventures and GiveWell in which we identify outstanding giving opportunities, make grants, follow the results, and publish our findings. The Project is not, itself, an organization."

edit: I cannot reply to the below, so I will edit my comment.

I am aware that GiveWell does not invest money. Instead it provides impartial analysis of investment impact. My contention is that this was not impartial. Dustin can handle his own money, but:

People using GiveWell to decide their own investments should now think twice in my view. Which kind of defeats the whole point.

And then there's the next paragraph:

> The Open Philanthropy Project typically recommends grants to the Open Philanthropy Project fund, a donor advised fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Support for the Open Philanthropy Project fund comes primarily from Good Ventures, though other donors have contributed as well. In some cases, the Open Philanthropy Project makes grant recommendations directly to Good Ventures.

It's basically all GV money - that is to say, Dustin and Cari's money.

Accidental nepotism is still nepotism, and should be actively avoided.

I don't know what's more frustrating, the blatant nepotism, or the apologists for this behavior. Good grief.

Related snip:

  Relationship disclosures

  OpenAI researchers Dario Amodei and Paul Christiano are 
  both technical advisors to Open Philanthropy and live in
  the same house as Holden. In addition, Holden is engaged to 
  Dario’s sister Daniela.

Copied for convenience: "OpenAI researchers Dario Amodei and Paul Christiano are both technical advisors to Open Philanthropy and live in the same house as Holden. In addition, Holden is engaged to Dario’s sister Daniela."

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