Thanks to the effort of our donors, the 2012 Summer Singularity Challenge has been met! All $150,000 contributed will be matched dollar for dollar by our matching backers, raising a total of $300,000 to fund the Machine Intelligence Research Institute’€™s operations. We reached our goal near 6pm on July 29th.

On behalf of our staff, volunteers, and entire community, I want to personally thank everyone who donated. Your dollars make the difference.

Here’€™s to a better future for the human species.

Thanks to the generosity of several major donors,^† every donation to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute made now until July 31, 2012 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to a total of $150,000!

Donate Now!

Now is your chance to double your impact while helping us raise up to $300,000 to help fund our research program and stage the upcoming Singularity Summit… which you can register for now!

Note: If you prefer to support rationality training, you are welcome to earmark your donations for “CFAR” (Center for Applied Rationality). Donations earmarked for CFAR will only be used for CFAR, and donations not earmarked for CFAR will only be used for Singularity research and outreach.

Since we published our strategic plan in August 2011, we have achieved most of the near-term goals outlined therein. Here are just a few examples:

• We outlined the open research problems related to our work (Section 1.1).
• We recruited several more research associates and about a dozen remote researchers (Section 1.2e).
• We held our annual Singularity Summit and gained corporate sponsors for it (Section 2.1).
• We made progress in decision theory (example) via LessWrong.com and our research associates (Section 2.2b).
• We published How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup Group (Section 2.2d).
• We released pre-prints of several forthcoming research articles, including How Hard is Artificial Intelligence?, Intelligence Explosion: Evidence and Import, and The Singularity and Machine Ethics (Section 2.3).
• We redesigned our primary website (Section 2.6).
• We acquired $40,000/month in free Google Adwords advertising, to drive traffic to websites operated by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (Section 2.6c).
• We began publishing monthly progress reports (Section 2.9b).
• We built up the Center for Applied Rationality such that it should be able to spin off from the Machine Intelligence Research Institute later this year (Section 3.1).
• We created a transparency section on our website, where visitors can find our IRS 990 forms, and also several standard organizational policies, e.g. a conflict of interest policy, non-discrimination policy, etc (Section 3.2).

In the coming year, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute plans to do the following:

• Hold our annual Singularity Summit, this year in San Francisco!
• Spin off the Center for Applied Rationality as a separate organization focused on rationality training, so that the Machine Intelligence Research Institute can be focused more exclusively on Singularity research and outreach.
• Publish additional research on AI risk and Friendly AI.
• Eliezer will write an “Open Problems in Friendly AI” sequence for Less Wrong. (For news on his rationality books, see here.)
• Finish Facing the Singularity and publish ebook versions of Facing the Singularity and The Sequences, 2006-2009.
• And much more! For details on what we might do with additional funding, see How to Purchase AI Risk Reduction.

If you’re planning to earmark your donation to CFAR (Center for Applied Rationality), here’s a preview of what CFAR plans to do in the next year:

• Develop additional lessons teaching the most important and useful parts of rationality. CFAR has already developed and tested over 18 hours of lessons so far, including classes on how to evaluate evidence using Bayesianism, how to make more accurate predictions, how to be more efficient using economics, how to use thought experiments to better understand your own motivations, and much more.
• Run immersive rationality retreats to teach from our curriculum and to connect aspiring rationalists with each other. CFAR ran pilot retreats in May and June. Participants in the May retreat called it “transformative” and “astonishing,” and the average response on the survey question, “Are you glad you came? (1-10)” was a 9.4. (We don’t have the June data yet, but people were similarly enthusiastic about that one.)
• Run SPARC, a camp on the advanced math of rationality for mathematically gifted high school students. CFAR has a stellar first-year class for SPARC 2012; most students admitted to the program placed in the top 50 on the USA Math Olympiad (or performed equivalently in a similar contest).
• Collect longitudinal data on the effects of rationality training, to improve our curriculum and to generate promising hypotheses to test and publish, in collaboration with other researchers. CFAR has already launched a one-year randomized controlled study tracking reasoning ability and various metrics of life success, using participants in our June minicamp and a control group.
• Develop apps and games about rationality, with the dual goals of (a) helping aspiring rationalists practice essential skills, and (b) making rationality fun and intriguing to a much wider audience. CFAR has two apps in beta testing: one training players to update their own beliefs the right amount after hearing other people’s beliefs, and another training players to calibrate their level of confidence in their own beliefs. CFAR is working with a developer on several more games training people to avoid cognitive biases.
• And more!

We appreciate your support for our high-impact work! Donate now, and seize a better than usual chance to move our work forward. Credit card transactions are securely processed using either PayPal or Google Checkout. If you have questions about donating, please contact Louie Helm at (510) 717-1477 or louie@intelligence.org.

† $150,000 of total matching funds has been provided by Jaan Tallinn, Tomer Kagan, Alexei Andreev, and Brandon Reinhart.

Past progress reports: April 2012, March 2012, February 2012, January 2012, December 2011.

Here’s what the Machine Intelligence Research Institute did in May 2012:

• How to Purchase AI Risk Reduction: Luke wrote a series of posts on how to purchase AI risk reduction, with cost estimates for many specific projects. Some projects are currently in place at SI; others can be launched if we are able to raise sufficient funding.
• Research articles: Luke continued to work with about a dozen collaborators on several developing research articles, including “Responses to Catastrophic AGI Risk,” mentioned here.
• Other writings: Kaj Sotala, with help from Luke and many others, published How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup Group. Carl published several articles: (1) Utilitarianism, contractualism, and self-sacrifice, (2) Philosophers vs. economists on discounting, (3) Economic growth: more costly disasters, better prevention, and (4) What to eat during impact winter? Eliezer wrote Avoid Motivated Cognition. Luke posted part 2 of his dialogue with Ben Goertzel about AGI.
• Ongoing long-term projects: Amy continued to work on Singularity Summit 2012. Michael continued to work on the Machine Intelligence Research Institute’s new primary website, new annual report, and new newsletter design. Louie and SI’s new executive assistant Ioven Fables are hard at work on organizational development and transparency (some of which will be apparent when the new website launches).
• Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR): The CFAR team continued to make progress toward spinning off this rationality-centric organization, in keeping with SI’s strategic plan. We also held the first summer minicamp, which surpassed our expectations and was very positively received. (More details on this will be compiled later.)
• Meetings with advisors, supporters, and potential researchers: As usual, various SI staff met or spoke with dozens of advisors, supporters, and collaborators about how to build the existential risk community, how to mitigate AI risk, how to improve the Machine Intelligence Research Institute’s effectiveness, and other topics.
• And of course much more than is listed here!

Finally, we’d like to recognize our most active volunteers in May 2012: Matthew Fallshaw, Gerard McCusker, Frank Adamek, David Althaus, Tim Oertel, and Casey Pfluger. Thanks everyone! (And, our apologies if we forgot to name you!)

Past progress reports: March 2012, February 2012, January 2012, December 2011.

Here’s what the Machine Intelligence Research Institute did in April 2012:

• SPARC: Several MIRI staff members are working in collaboration with SI research associate Paul Christiano and a few others to develop a rationality camp for high school students with exceptional mathematical ability (SPARC). This is related to our efforts to spin off a new rationality-focused organization, and it is also a major step forward in our efforts to locate elite young math talent that may be useful in our research efforts.
• Research articles: Luke published AI Risk Bibliography 2012. He is currently developing nearly a dozen other papers with a variety of co-authors. New SI research associate Kaj Sotala has two papers forthcoming in the International Journal of Machine Consciousness: Advantages of Artificial Intelligences, Uploads, and Digital Minds and Coalescing Minds: Brain Uploading-Related Group Mind Scenarios.
• Other articles: Luke published a dialogue with AGI researcher Pei Wang and several more posts in the AI Risk and Opportunity series. Luke also worked with Kaj Sotala to develop an instructional booklet for Less Wrong meetup group organizers, which is nearly complete.
• Ongoing long-term projects: Amy continued to work on Singularity Summit 2012. Michael launched the new Singularity Summit website, continued to work on the Machine Intelligence Research Institute’s new primary website, new annual report, and new newsletter design. Luke uploaded several more volunteer-prepared translations of Facing the Singularity. Luke also continued to build the Machine Intelligence Research Institute’s set of remote collaborators, who are hard at work converting the Machine Intelligence Research Institute’s research articles to a new template, hunting down predictions of AI, writing literature summaries on heuristics and biases, and more.
• Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR): “Rationality Group” now has a final name: the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR). The CFAR team has been hard at work preparing for the upcoming rationality minicamps, as well as continuing to develop the overall strategy for the emerging organization.
• Meetings with advisors, supporters, and potential researchers: As usual, various SI staff met or spoke with dozens of advisors, supporters, and collaborators about how to build the existential risk community, how to mitigate AI risk, how to improve the Machine Intelligence Research Institute’s effectiveness, and other topics. Quixey co-founder and CEO Liron Shapira was added as an advisor.
• And of course much more than is listed here!

Finally, we’d like to recognize our most active volunteers in April 2012: Matthew Fallshaw, Gerard McCusker, Frank Adamek, David Althaus, Tim Oertel, Casey Pfluger, Paul Gentemann, and John Maxwell. Thanks everyone! (And, our apologies if we forgot to name you!)