Contributing to tech progress

Abstract

The article argues that contributing to technological progress may be one of the most efficient ways to make the world richer, and explores plausible ways that a philanthropist could directly push on tech progress: supporting/creating tech companies; subsidizing corporate R&D or academia; and offering prizes. It discusses general considerations affecting these interventions, such as substitution effects where funding one area of tech progress bids up the price of inputs, leading to redistribution of researchers from other areas. It also discusses the potential for consuming low-hanging fruit, where the most attractive problems in a research area are targeted first, leading to a negative feedback loop where the availability of additional researchers depends on the attractiveness of unsolved problems. Finally, the article considers positive feedbacks to research on a problem, such as resolving bottlenecking problems and increasing the visibility and prestige of the field. – AI-generated abstract.