Dario's grad-school donation math: valuing an adult death at 2-3x an infant's
austinc3301 · x · 2026-11-09
austinc3301 defends Dario Amodei against criticism of his old donation reasoning: as a grad student deciding where to give $10k, Dario faced near-total absence of research — GiveWell was in its infancy — and did his best with limited information. The attached screenshot shows Dario's original writing: citing GiveWell estimates of $545 per infant death averted for Village Reach vs $150–750 per death averted for Stop TB, then arguing from personal values that an adult death is perhaps 2-3x worse than an infant's, making Stop TB 2-3x more cost-effective for him — while acknowledging the assessment is subjective and others may validly disagree.
More from AGI Musings
- Silicon Valley warns AI will kill everyone — normies respond by voting against data centers — DavidSKrueger · 2026-11-09
- Banning AI Is Like Banning Uranium Enrichment, Safety Researchers Quip — DavidSKrueger · 2026-11-09
- AI patronage model questioned: keeping access internal is just as disempowering — andersonbcdefg · 2026-11-09
- Cambridge AI safety prof delighted by Terminator one-liner used to pitch AI risk to Americans — DavidSKrueger · 2026-11-09
- Ending AI labs' power to pick winners via early model access, argued as key anti-RSI lever — andersonbcdefg · 2026-11-09
- AI safety debate: would a 50-year delay of frontier AI even help? — ohabryka · 2026-11-09