Some quick thoughts on this initiative:

I like the Sentinel minutes, which I read weekly. So far I think all the value I've gotten from the minutes has been from learning interesting things rather than from me making different decisions. However, I think that e.g. if the Avian flu got bad enough that I should do something about it, I'd likely learn that earlier than I would otherwise thanks to Sentinel.

The emergency response team is a higher variance bet, but I actually think it makes a lot of sense. I and the people around me often err in the direction of too much research and analysis, and not enough action.

Team:

• I've greatly appreciated Nuño's content over the years. My donation is largely a vote of confidence in Nuño, or to be more specific: "I'm excited to see what Nuño does next, and want him to have a shot at it".

• I don't know Rai.

• I know Gavin, and like Arb's stuff. Note also that Gavin cowrote this sequence.

• I like Raymond as a person, though I'm less familiar with his outputs.

• I don't know Nathan personally but I've followed him online for a while, and he appears earnest and entrepreneurial.

• I only know of Sol Novak from some of their online writing, and I feel a bit less excited about them. I'm not very confident though, eg the funding memo says "known for being able to execute well in fast-paced novel environments" and I don't know what that refers to, it's the sort of thing that could change my mind.

• I know of Tolga from his presence on Twitter commenting on AI, which I've overall disliked. Though note that he's on the foresight team which will prioritize shorter-horizon questions (and is a Superforecaster / part of Samotsvety) so maybe his high-level AI takes don't matter that much.

• I don't know Mathias, Vivian, Vidur, or Lisa.

Overall I'm very excited about Sentinel. I encourage other people to donate.

Lost a personal bet with Rai Sur about the US elections, so this is a donation from him :)

I believe in the mission, path to impact, and team behind Sentinel. I read their weekly briefings religiously.

World class team with an important mission that I wouldn't trust anyone else with more.

[epistemic status: i've spent about 5-20 hours thinking by myself and talking with rai about my thoughts below. however, i spent fairly little time actually writing this, so the literal text below might not map to my views as well as other comments of mine.]

IMO, Sentinel is one of the most impactful uses of marginal forecasting money.

some specific things i like about the team & the org thus far:

• nuno's blog is absolutely fantastic — deeply excellent, there are few that i'd recommend higher

• rai is responsive (both in terms of time and in terms of feedback) and extremely well-calibrated across a variety of interpersonal domains

• samotsvety is, far and away, the best forecasting team in the world

• sentinel's weekly newsletter is my ~only news source

  • why would i seek anything but takes from the best forecasters in the world?

  • i think i'd be willing to pay at least $5/week for this, though i expect many folks in the EA community would be happy to pay 5x-10x that. their blog is currently free (!!)

  • i'd recommend skimming whatever their latest newsletter was to get a sense of the content/scope/etc

• linch's piece sums up my thoughts around strategy pretty well

i have the highest crux-uncertainty and -elasticity around the following, in (extremely rough) order of impact on my thought process:

• do i have higher-order philosophical commitments that swamp whatever Sentinel does? (for ex: short timelines, animal suffering, etc)

• will Sentinel be able to successfully scale up?

• conditional on Sentinel successfully forecasting a relevant GCR, will Sentinel successfully prevent or mitigate the GCR?

• will Sentinel be able to successfully forecast a relevant GCR?

• how likely are the category of GCRs that sentinel might mitigate to actually come about? (vs no GCRS or GCRS that are totally unpredictable/unmitigateable)

Usually funding is not the highest leverage input to an org succeeding or not -- it is some combination of having a committed and high-skill team in place, product vision / theory of change, targeting the right problem, speed of execution, etc.

In this case, I believe that Sentinel has many of these ingredients in place for generating significant social value in expectation (their memo goes into more detail on the argument for this, and this analysis should hold some weight given the team's forecasting track record), but they are currently a non-consensus bet among philanthropic donors. In startup terms, I believe that makes this org 'undervalued', i.e. impact alpha is available for early investors, even for relatively small dollar amounts.

AFAICT VaccinateCA was tremendously impactful, and I suspect that's one of many instances an agile, independent team would be able to do the work a calcified institution would struggle with.

I've found the weekly Sentinel minutes to be very high-quality reporting about world events

Hey all! I'm the cofounder Nuño mentioned. If anyone's perusing this and is curious about

• funding us

• helping in any other way, like joining the reserve team

You can email hello@sentinel-team.org or book a call directly with me here.

Exception situational awareness reporting

I've had acquaintances suggest that I be on standby for an emergency response team before, but I tend to be skeptical because my own rapid response capability requires lots of infrastructure and protocol to set up and importantly, maintain. What infrastructure and (communication, operating) protocols have you set up to allow for rapid response? I'm interested in reading any operational documents you have.

I enjoy the newsletter, especially on pandemics, and am excited to see where Sentinel goes

I think just the Twitter minutes are already quite valuable: once-per-week news that focus on topics that are most likely to be relevant. If you are willing to pay for a subscription to something like The Economist, consider supporting this!

TL;DR: I am excited about Nuño and about this project.

This project already had a head start and is going strong. Their minutes on Twitter have become my primary source of news for topics outside of AI.

I am more cautious about the rapid response angle, but I am willing to bet on Nuño's vision and see what they can achieve in the next few months.