Funding for PauseAI

At this point, PauseAI has not received any funding. However, we did apply to Lightspeed grants and expect to receive 20k. There was also an anonymous potential donor who reached out on twitter who's willing to do 10k, but they want a written grant request.

I'm currently setting up a dutch legal entity #Legal entitiy / entities for PauseAI that could receive donations. I'm strongly in favor of being very transparent on how we spend our money. This helps to generate trust and convey that we're not part of some weird ass conspiracy.

Which costs should we cover

Materials used for protests
Travel expenses
Ad campaigns (e.g. promote tweets / videos)
Hire artists for materials
Web development / hosting
PauseAI employees

## Which costs have already been made / should be reimbursed retroactively

Protest materials & travel to bletchely, paid for by @William Baird and @Alistair Stewart .
Flyers / travel / gsuite costs by Joep

## How you can help

Share thoughts about policy for how we spend money
Help out getting funding (e.g. suggest grant application forms, reach out to potential donors)

## Funders

One-off donations: This should be a no-brainer! We have a donate page
#Memberships / Recurring donations
Lightspeed grants: We got 20k last round (not yet finished)
The Navigation Fund: https://www.navigation.org/, from Ripple founder. Has an AI cause area. Their founder is behind the Humane League (animal advocacy pressure work)
SFF: Jaan Tallinn's fund. Jaan has short timelines.
OpenPhil
ACX: Smaller, but cool: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/acx-grants-results
Long-term future fund: https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-future
#Funding circle for slowing down AI

hurt-tomatoOP•12/8/23, 2:35 PM

Some evidence we can point to: https://www.socialchangelab.org/_files/ugd/503ba4_9b649b50484748bfbae215d675084118.pdf

hurt-tomatoOP•12/22/23, 3:25 PM

We now have a donate form in our merchandise form. We also mention it in the FAQ.

sacred-rose•1/15/24, 4:24 PM

Outside the #Funding circle for slowing down AI we should apply in LTFF no and other places no?

sacred-rose•1/15/24, 4:26 PM

I mean, we have some funding, but I don't have idea how much would be enough.. for some time?

sacred-rose•1/15/24, 4:30 PM

Also, I feel like we could get a lot more if we proposed like a "campaign" and idk, some content creation stuff. Is there not interest on funding for "Mega projects" or something like that?

sacred-rose•1/15/24, 4:34 PM

Also, do we lose something putting PauseAI in Navigation Fund or Manifund? If not, it's another no-brainer. I think FLI gives grants too.

sacred-rose•1/15/24, 5:47 PM

https://aisafety.world/tiles/ on "Funding" there is even more places

embarrassing-maroon•1/16/24, 2:06 AM

ig something worth doing cld be collab grant app writing

embarrassing-maroon•1/16/24, 2:07 AM

and something EA minded funds wld wanna see is how Pause AI is making some measurable impact(for eg traction or counterfactual followers)

constitutional-coral•1/17/24, 6:17 AM

I think there should be a small summary about the org and the objectives. It could be used here or by community members in case they come across someone who may be able to donate.

full-green•1/26/24, 1:49 AM

@Joep Meindertsma @Pato Vercesi I recommend applying for a grant from the AI Risk Management Fund (ARM Fund).
https://www.airiskfund.com/
It was recently spun out from the Long Term Future Fund (LTFF) and according to Linch Zhang, they have already privately received $500k in pledges. Their focus areas are Research, Policy, and Field Building, and I think PauseAI fits under the Policy arm.

AI Risk Mitigation Fund

hurt-tomatoOP•1/26/24, 9:16 AM

Thanks @Nathan Metzger!

dramatic-maroon•2/1/24, 12:02 AM

Taken from a NFP I used to work with. I think the PauseAI site should have a big donate button

dramatic-maroon•2/1/24, 12:04 AM

And the more tangible the donation is framed, the better. For example:

$100 donation buys 10 protest signs
$2000 donation organises a protest
$500 gets 20 people protest t shirts
$300 = a megaphone and speaker

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:24 PM

@Guido Reichstadter noticed that if we get the members of this discord to donate 10$ a month, we already have 8k revenue - enough to house and feed a group of people to work on this full-time

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:24 PM

We can do recurring donations through the FourthWall shop

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:25 PM

We need nice names and tiers to link to the discord

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:26 PM

So members get a flair and a private channel or something

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:26 PM

(maybe this warrants a new project...)

inner-olive•2/26/24, 12:31 PM

Definitely need more paperclip minimizers!

At this stage where capacity & resources are small, it makes sense to mobilize as much energy as can to building capacity. Where is the formal structure of PauseAI at? Like there is legal entity with bank account & governance structure?

Iinner-olive Definitely need more paperclip minimizers! At this stage where capacity & reso...

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:32 PM

We have Stichting in NL (+ one in UK, US)https://pauseai.info/legal

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:32 PM

Also see #Legal entitiy / entities for PauseAI

awake-maroon•2/26/24, 12:34 PM

I just noticed that Holly and William should probably get an @pauseai.info adress

inner-olive•2/26/24, 12:35 PM

Are boards in place?

Iinner-olive Are boards in place?

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:35 PM

yes

inner-olive•2/26/24, 12:42 PM

I would like to help with fundraising, who are the relevant ppl to coordinate with? Is there structure to interface with someone in my position as a volunteer?

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:44 PM

That's amazing!

Thank you Guido!

You can keep in touch directly with me. Formal decisions may need to be approved by the board at some point.

inner-olive•2/26/24, 12:46 PM

Ok great! Is there anyone else currently working on fundraising? Have we had any success? What kind of piblic plan / track record / pitch is available to inspire /motivate donation?

inner-olive•2/26/24, 12:47 PM

What are the dalient opportunities youre aware of that need development?

inner-olive•2/26/24, 12:48 PM

*salient hold on let me turn on autocorrect

inner-olive•2/26/24, 12:53 PM

Is there a coordination team managing the development of the organization?

Iinner-olive Ok great! Is there anyone else currently working on fundraising? Have we had any...

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:55 PM

Nobody is working on fundraising. We have some track record (added it to the /donate page just yet)

Iinner-olive Is there a coordination team managing the development of the organization?

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:55 PM

no there isn't

inner-olive•2/26/24, 12:59 PM

Hmm ok is that on the radar?

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 12:59 PM

We have a million plans and things to do

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 1:00 PM

Mostly we just need people to help out

inner-olive•2/26/24, 1:21 PM

Can you give me like the short elevator pitch on what is the master plan that ties it all together? Ie, what is your goal & how do you plan to achieve it? Are there any orgs that you have experience with that you hold as a mental model, ie “like x.org but for AI”?

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 1:22 PM

Extinction rebellion is an important inspriation. Build a social structure that allows for a community to organically grow. Help members to organize impactful and relevant actions.

inner-olive•2/26/24, 1:36 PM

Ok so extinction rebellions theory of change was predicated on building a mass movement to engage in mass nonviolent civil disobedience to compel govt action on its climate demands. That was the initial schema on which the movement was built, and that generated the momentum for mass mobilization. This plan was developed & executed rapidly over about 6 months culminating in a mass civil resistance event in April 2019, which achieved partial success in its stated goals, which i would say was the high water mark of the movement so far.

What I’m trying to elicit is the bridge between PauseAI stated goal and the concrete actions that volunteers on the ground will be asked to contribute to. If you want to make effective progress towards a given goal, you’re going to need a strategy, organization & organizers towards implementing that strategy.
There is an expression, “the purpose of a system is what it does” , you can articulate the purpose through a goal, but the strategy & implementation determine what the system actually does. The key to goal directed coordinated action is getting the actions of volunteers in consilience so that they in practice accomplish the goal.

awake-maroon•2/26/24, 1:38 PM

This discussion might be relevant projects-💪Theory of Change / Macrostrategy

inner-olive•2/26/24, 1:39 PM

Also in a distributed movement the better this link is communicated to volunteers and understood by them, the more effectively volunteers can self organize

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 1:41 PM

What I’m trying to elicit is the bridge between PauseAI stated goal and the concrete actions that volunteers on the ground will be asked to contribute to.

So many things that people can do to help out: https://pauseai.info/action

I think joining / organising protests is one of the many things people can and should do

PauseAI

Take action

Ways to help out with pausing AGI development.

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 2:08 PM

Regarding funding: we should probably focus on this one: https://survivalandflourishing.fund/s-process

Survival and Flourishing.Fund (SFF)

SFF’s “S-process” for making grant recommendations

Hhurt-tomato > What I’m trying to elicit is the bridge between PauseAI stated goal and the co...

inner-olive•2/26/24, 2:28 PM

Ok so from the action list, the pointy tip of the spear, ie where all your efforts interface with established political power is lobbying. This suggests an implicit theory of change something like “PauseAI will achieve implementation of an ai development moratorium by generating sufficient lobbying influence.”
this reminds me of a group in the US called Citizen’s Climate Lobby, who lobby for a particular piece of carbon tax legislation. It has a fairly broad membership in the hundreds of thousands I think and they are very well organized towards lobbying tge political process.

I personally don’t know much about the internal works (or lobbying in general) but an outside observation is that strategically this model resembles a war of attrition/ conventional warfare bc there is a large and well funded opposition movement lobbying in the opposite direction.

Hhurt-tomato Regarding funding: we should probably focus on this one: https://survivalandflou...

inner-olive•2/26/24, 2:30 PM

Let me look into this

full-green•2/26/24, 3:22 PM

I saw the Bunq link. Can PauseAI also set up a PayPal for bank transfers from non-European donors?

Ffull-green I saw the Bunq link. Can PauseAI also set up a PayPal for bank transfers from no...

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 3:23 PM

If you select "sofort" in the Bunq link you can use paypal!

hurt-tomatoOP•2/26/24, 3:23 PM