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originally posted in the thread for sneers not worth a whole post, then I changed my mind and decided it is worth a whole post, cause it is pretty damn important

Posted on r/HPMOR roughly one day ago

full transcript:

Epstein asked to call during a fundraiser. My notes say that I tried to explain AI alignment principles and difficulty to him (presumably in the same way I always would) and that he did not seem to be getting it very much. Others at MIRI say (I do not remember myself / have not myself checked the records) that Epstein then offered MIRI $300K; which made it worth MIRI’s while to figure out whether Epstein was an actual bad guy versus random witchhunted guy, and ask if there was a reasonable path to accepting his donations causing harm; and the upshot was that MIRI decided not to take donations from him. I think/recall that it did not seem worthwhile to do a whole diligence thing about this Epstein guy before we knew whether he was offering significant funding in the first place, and then he did, and then MIRI people looked further, and then (I am told) MIRI turned him down.

Epstein threw money at quite a lot of scientists and I expect a majority of them did not have a clue. It’s not standard practice among nonprofits to run diligence on donors, and in fact I don’t think it should be. Diligence is costly in executive attention, it is relatively rare that a major donor is using your acceptance of donations to get social cover for an island-based extortion operation, and this kind of scrutiny is more efficiently centralized by having professional law enforcement do it than by distributing it across thousands of nonprofits.

In 2009, MIRI (then SIAI) was a fiscal sponsor for an open-source project (that is, we extended our nonprofit status to the project, so they could accept donations on a tax-exempt basis, having determined ourselves that their purpose was a charitable one related to our mission) and they got $50K from Epstein. Nobody at SIAI noticed the name, and since it wasn’t a donation aimed at SIAI itself, we did not run major-donor relations about it.

This reply has not been approved by MIRI / carefully fact-checked, it is just off the top of my own head.

  • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
    5·
    2 days ago

    Over on Reddit, somewhatmorenumerous has been looking into Form 990 for the 2009 Epstein donation. Yudkowsky says:

    In 2009, MIRI (then SIAI) was a fiscal sponsor for an open-source project (that is, we extended our nonprofit status to the project, so they could accept donations on a tax-exempt basis, having determined ourselves that their purpose was a charitable one related to our mission) and they got $50K from Epstein. Nobody at SIAI noticed the name, and since it wasn’t a donation aimed at SIAI itself, we did not run major-donor relations about it.

    The Epstein files say the recipient was someone called Ben Goertzel with a project named OpenCog or something like that. somewhatmorenumerous has doubts:

    MatriceJacobine, if SIAI paid out a grant of more than $5k to Goertzel, it should show up in their tax records. It doesn’t.

    If Goertzel was an official Director of Research at SIAI in 2009, he would need to have been listed in Part VII. Compensation of Officers, Directors, Trustees, Key Employees, Highest Compensated Employees, and Independent Contractors (he wasn’t).

    I’m not disputing that Goertzel got money from SIAI, or that he and SIAI called him Director of Research: I’m pointing out that SIAI’s official tax records don’t reflect what Eliezer and Goertzel say happened. That’s not good: you’re supposed to file accurate tax records.

    But maybe there’s documentation that proves me wrong! SIAI is, after all, a 501(c)3, a public charity, and Eliezer is here in this chat trying to be transparent. I assure you I would be the most delighted person in this chat if such documentation were provided. …

    Also, “sponsorship” isn’t a thing that costs money: it is a nonprofit funding structure in which organizations that DO have 501(c)3 status can provide a path to tax-deductible donation for entities that DO NOT have 501(c)3 status. People donate to the parent 501(c)3, which then passes the donation to the sponsored project.

    SIAI’s 2009 Accomplishments lists Ben Goertzel as an employee.

    I don’t think this is as serious as telling the Internet you would cover up a mature adult in your organization having sex with multiple minors, but inaccurate tax paperwork can cost you your nonprofit status.

    Edit to escape (c) (renders as © )

      • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        They could easily afford to hire a good admin assistant to sort out their organizational structure and bookkeeping. Why they chose nor to hire and listen to her or him I leave as an exercise for the reader.

        • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
          6·
          2 days ago

          “Diligence is costly in executive attention” – EY when explaining why they didn’t read Epstein’s wikipedia to find out if he’s a convicted pedo.