Manifund is hosting impact certificates for the Open Philanthropy AI Worldviews Contest!
Open Phil is running an essay contest on AI safety, with $225k in prizes
Essay authors can sell a share of their potential winnings
Accredited investors can invest in entries to support authors and predict the results
From Open Phil’s announcement:
The contest deadline is May 31, 2023. All work posted for the first time on or after September 23, 2022 is eligible. Use this form to submit your entry.
Prize Conditions and Amounts
Essays should should address one of these two questions:
Question 1: What is the probability that AGI is developed by January 1, 2043? [1]
Question 2: Conditional on AGI being developed by 2070, what is the probability that humanity will suffer an existential catastrophe due to loss of control over an AGI system?
Essays should be clearly targeted at one of the questions, not both.
Winning essays will be determined by the extent to which they substantively inform the thinking of a panel of Open Phil employees.
…
Panelist credences on the probability of AGI by 2043 range from ~10% to ~45%. Conditional on AGI being developed by 2070, panelist credences on the probability of existential catastrophe range from ~5% to ~50%.
We will award a total of six prizes across three tiers:
First prize (two awards): $50,000
Second prize (two awards): $37,500
Third prize (two awards): $25,000
You can read more about impact certificates on our about page. Here’s an example for this round:
Alice submits an essay called “AGI by 2043? More Like AG-Why Not?” (credit to ChatGPT for the title).
On Manifund, she offers to sell 20% of stake in her future winnings at a valuation of $5,000
Bob takes her up on this offer, purchasing 20% equity for $1,000.
Ultimately, Alice wins $25,000 for third prize.
Because Bob owns 20% equity, she pays him 20% of her winnings ($5,000), and keeps the other $20,000.
Unlike the ACX Mini-Grants round, there will be no auction phase for AI Worldviews Contest. Instead, impact certs will immediately be tradeable, where creators can sell and investors can buy equity at valuations of their choice.
Mostly hedging. Past EA contests have been critiqued for having too steep a drop off in prize money and thus under-compensating valuable but non-winning contributions, some of which required a lot of effort to create. This leaves the authors of such contributions uncompensated and dissatisfied, and can discourage entry in the first place.
Impact certificates curb this issue: by selling some stake in your project, you can still keep the majority of your prize if you do win, while guaranteeing that even if you don’t win, you were paid for your time writing the essay.
It’s also another place to share your work and spread ideas that you think matter!
That’s ultimately up to you, but we recommend starting by selling 10-20%.
You should choose an initial valuation equal to or a bit below your expected payout. For example, if you think there’s a 5% chance you get first prize, 5% chance you get second prize, 5% chance you get third prize, and 85% chance you get nothing, your initial valuation should be around $5,000 and no higher than $5,625.
You’re still welcome to create a project on Manifund and explain in the description what you’re considering writing about and some background information about yourself. This way, if investors think you and your idea are promising, they can offer to buy equity, and you can decide whether or not to write the essay based on whether those buy offers pay for your time.
We ask that you only accept buy offers (or make sell offers) once you’re confident that you’ll actually submit an entry to the contest.
Manifund is not formally collaborating with Open Philanthropy on this. However, Open Philanthropy has confirmed that authors are allowed to post their essays on Manifund and sell a share of their future earnings. Posting an essay on Manifund does not enter you into the contest — you’ll also need to submit your essay through OpenPhil’s submission form.
You may notice that some entries reference the FTX Future Fund. That’s because this contest was originally theirs, and Open Philanthropy set up a similar contest after the Future Fund shut down in October, 2022.
To kick off this round, the Manifund team has selected some high-quality essay submissions to publish on our platform. The impact certificates for these essays have not been claimed by the authors yet; still, accredited investors place buy offers for these certs, which authors can choose to accept once they’ve signed in to claim their cert.
Please reach out to AIWorldviewsContest@openphilanthropy.org with any questions, comments, or concerns about the contest itself. Join us on Discord for questions about Manifund or impact certs.