From an outsider perspective, this looks like the sort of thing that almost anyone could get started on and I like the phrasing you used to signal that. AI progress moves so fast that you are most likely going to the only one looking at something and so you can do very basic things like
"How deterministic are these models? If you take the first K lines of the CoT and regenerate it, do you get the same output?"
It's pretty easy to imagine taking 1 line of CoT and regenerating and then 2 lines...
I think a lot of people can just do this and getting to do it under Neel Nanda is likely to lead to a high quality paper.
In common English parlance, we don't preface everything with "I have estimates that state...".
I don't think any reasonable person thinks that they mean that if they got an extra $1, they'd somehow pay someone for 10 minutes of time to lobby some tiny backyard farm of about 1770 pigs to take on certain oractices. You get to these unit economics with a lot more nuance.
First, I want to commend Vetted Causes for doing this. The EA community loves criticism as a concept but rarely likes it when it comes to the object level. This is quite the object level critique and we see how our soldier mindset quickly arose. I'm hesitant to give any pushback on this since I want the cost to doing this work (which is quite hard) to be as low as possible. With that said, I want to
When it comes to Sinergia, I have quite the strong prior that they would be effective. Sinergia is what you would get if you took THL-style corporate campaigns, put them in the Global South where most of the animals on Earth live, in worse conditions than in the Global North, get way cheaper talent since salaries are lower and put in a kick-ass CEO in Carolina. This is kind of a recipe for an effective charity.
For Vetted Causes, I think your critiques would do better, be more productive for the community and frankly, be better received by the EA community if you would first get feedback from the organization that you are evaluating. You don't even need to change anything based on what they reply. I would recommend you use your judgement in evaluating what they have to say if it corrects any factual errors but the rights to the final wording of the post remain your own. This has three main advantages
I again want to commend VettedCauses for doing these. They aren't easy. I'll pre-commit at least $1000 USD to VettedCauses for their next critique (provided it's a serious one) and they run it by the organization in question for feedback.
I just want to add some colour as someone from a Western country (Canada) that has lived a couple years in Latin America. The rule of law is simply followed far less and it is a far lower trust society. However much American companies follow corporate commitments, I expect less of Brazilian ones.
Also, companies in Western countries don't follow the law all the time. In Latin America, the law is a bit of a joke and there is more corruption. The fact that it was already illegal updates me ~0 on what a factory farm in Brazil is doing.
It's a shame and a sign of significant bias in EA that this got so many disagree votes. What are people disagreeing with? Presumably that taxes kill people but the author makes a very simple argument that nearly everyone in EA approximately agrees with. He then goes on to point out cases where the sign could be reversed or approximately 0.
This is lazy voting.
Not specifically but in talking with investors, it was made pretty clear that they would not be happy to invest if their profits would be hampered from donations and we could only do it with our own money. Frankly, I think that makes sense. You get to donate your own money, not others. If you're in a spot where you can be picky with investors, you can just get a higher valuation or better deal terms.
I think this effect is completely overshadowed by the fact if what you are saying is true, we have 5-10 years on the technical alignment/governance of AI to get things to go well.
Now is the time to donate and work on AI safety stuff. Not to get rich and donate to it later in the hopes that things worked out.