Project summary

My YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@DrWaku) has over 24,000 subscribers and 1,000,000 lifetime views. The channel communicates to a broad audience about how AI will impact society, and has many videos about AI safety specifically. I feel that most existing video content is highly technical and aimed at researchers, or too sensational without a clear grasp of AI safety risks. Recently, I've been interviewing many people in AI safety, including Yoshua Bengio and Connor Leahy and Roman Yampolskiy (upcoming).

My staple though is videos I make myself. I put as much research into my videos as possible, condense the information, and explain it simply. I do about 8-12 hours of research and condense it into only 20-30 minutes, keeping the explanations at a level that most high school/university educated adults would understand. I want to provide the highest value possible to the general public for their watch time.

Testimonials

Here are some comments from my channel from the past few months:

“Of all the AI content creators, your videos are always the most well researched. So when you choose an interesting and novel topic to report on, you hit it out of the park. This video is a perfect example of that.”

“Thanks for bringing some solid arguments both ways in this video, THAT's how you do research kids, other "AI Youtubers" should learn from you. This channel is an underrated masterpiece.”

“Absolutely love Connor! Been following him for years. [...] I pray for the day you can get Eliezer…”

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

My goal is to reach 100,000 subscribers within twelve months. Actually, I experienced 15% per month subscriber growth in 2024, and at that rate, I would surpass 100,000 (estimate 113,000) in only 11 months! It could even happen sooner. This September was a record, where I gained over 5000 subscribers due to two high performing videos.

At 100,000 subscribers, it becomes much easier for the channel to fund itself through brand deals and potentially grants from larger sources. I want it to partially support my income, or at least pay for itself. And I’m well on my way if I just keep doing what I’ve been doing.

How will this funding be used?

By far my largest expense is video editing ($1000-$1500 USD/month). At a previous job, I was able to self-fund these expenses, but I can no longer afford to do so. I have enough funds for H1 2025 editing, so the minimum goal of this fundraiser is to receive enough for H2 2025 editing ($6000).

If I have additional funds, I will hire a channel manager to help identify good trends and video ideas, which is common for larger channels. The person I have in mind would take probably $500/month. If I have even more funds, I will use them to travel to conferences to find people to interview and topics to cover. Each conference is roughly $2000. The full goal is $6000+$6000+$2000 for six months of editing, twelve months of a channel manager, and one conference.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

It’s just me and my (freelancer) editor that I’ve worked with for over a year.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Too much time taken by my day job. But my job is very understanding of the YouTube channel and supports my efforts to work on it. Life is busy, but the channel is very important to me. I have turned down other opportunities to be able to pursue my channel.

What other funding are you or your project getting?

I get about $150 USD/month from YouTube ads, and about $30/month from my Patreon. I recently received $10,000 USD from an FLI prize (this helped fund some of 2024's videos, and will fund some in the first half of 2025).

I applied for Open Phil and the Long-Term Future Fund months ago. The former rejected my application, and I’m still waiting to hear from the latter (not very hopeful).

How do I know you are the real Dr Waku?

I posted about Manifund on my Twitter/X and Bluesky accounts.