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This is: SIAI - An Examination, published by BrandonReinhart on the LessWrong.
12/13/2011 - A 2011 update with data from the 2010 fiscal year is in progress. Should be done by the end of the week or sooner.
Disclaimer
I am not affiliated with the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
I have not donated to the SIAI prior to writing this.
I made this pledge prior to writing this document.
Notes
Images are now hosted on LessWrong.com.
The 2010 Form 990 data will be available later this month.
It is not my intent to propagate misinformation. Errors will be corrected as soon as they are identified.
Introduction
Acting on gwern's suggestion in his Girl Scout Cookie analysis, I decided to look at SIAI funding. After reading about the Visiting Fellows Program and more recently the Rationality Boot Camp, I decided that the SIAI might be something I would want to support. I am concerned with existential risk and grapple with the utility implications. I feel that I should do more.
I wrote on the mini-boot camp page a pledge that I would donate enough to send someone to rationality mini-boot camp. This seemed to me a small cost for the potential benefit. The SIAI might get better at building rationalists. It might build a rationalist who goes on to solve a problem. Should I donate more? I wasn’t sure. I read gwern’s article and realized that I could easily get more information to clarify my thinking.
So I downloaded the SIAI’s Form 990 annual IRS filings and started to write down notes in a spreadsheet. As I gathered data and compared it to my expectations and my goals, my beliefs changed. I now believe that donating to the SIAI is valuable. I cannot hide this belief in my writing. I simply have it.
My goal is not to convince you to donate to the SIAI. My goal is to provide you with information necessary for you to determine for yourself whether or not you should donate to the SIAI. Or, if not that, to provide you with some direction so that you can continue your investigation.
The SIAI's Form 990's are available at GuideStar and Foundation Center. You must register in order to access the files at GuideStar.
2002 (Form 990-EZ)
2003 (Form 990-EZ)
2004 (Form 990-EZ)
2005 (Form 990)
2006 (Form 990)
2007 (Form 990)
2008 (Form 990-EZ)
2009 (Form 990)
SIAI Financial Overview
The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) is a public organization working to reduce existential risk from future technologies, in particular artificial intelligence. "The Singularity Institute brings rational analysis and rational strategy to the challenges facing humanity as we develop cognitive technologies that will exceed the current upper bounds on human intelligence." The SIAI are also the founders of Less Wrong.
The graphs above offer an accurate summary of SIAI financial state since 2002. Sometimes the end of year balances listed in the Form 990 doesn’t match what you’d get if you did the math by hand. These are noted as discrepancies between the filed year end balance and the expected year end balance or between the filed year start balance and the expected year start balance.
Filing Error 1 - There appears to be a minor typo to the effect of $4.86 in the end of year balance for the 2004 document. It appears that Part I, Line 18 has been summed incorrectly. $32,445.76 is listed, but the expected result is $32,450.41. The Part II balance sheet calculations which agree with the error so the source of the error is unclear. The start of year balance in 2005 reflects the expected value so this was probably just a typo in 2004. The following year’s reported start of year balance does not contain the error.
Filing Error 2 - The 2006 document reports a year start balance of $95,105.00 when the expected year start balance is $165,284.00, a discrepancy of $70,179.00. This amount is close to ...
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