Hello Effective Altruism Forum, I am Nate Soares, and I will be here to answer your questions tomorrow, Thursday the 11th of June, 15:00-18:00 US Pacific time. You can post questions here in the interim.
Last week Monday, I took the reins as executive director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. MIRI focuses on studying technical problems of long-term AI safety. I'm happy to chat about what that means, why it's important, why we think we can make a difference now, what the open technical problems are, how we approach them, and some of my plans for the future.
I'm also happy to answer questions about my personal history and how I got here, or about personal growth and mindhacking (a subject I touch upon frequently in my blog, Minding Our Way), or about whatever else piques your curiosity. This is an AMA, after all!
EDIT (15:00): All right, I'm here. Dang there are a lot of questions! Let's get this started :-)
EDIT (18:00): Ok, that's a wrap. Thanks, everyone! Those were great questions.
What are your plans for taking MIRI to the next level? What is the next level?
Now that MIRI is focused on math research (a good move) and not on outreach, there is less of a role for volunteers and supporters. With the donation from Elon Musk, some of which will presumably get to MIRI, the marginal value of small donations has gone down. How do you plan to keep your supporters engaged and donating? (The alternative, which is perhaps feasible, could be for MIRI to be an independent research institution, without a lot of public engagement, funded by a few big donors.)