The Google Foundation
Google has announced that it will contribute a certain percentage of its stock value (approximately $1B, judged by stock prices today) and annual profits to humanitarian causes over the next 20 years via the Google Foundation. This is a level of charitable giving similar to that of other big technology companies such as Cisco Systems, Intel, and eBay. But I hope that Google's unique, hands-on approach to such activity will cause its humanitarian investments to yield a greater return-per-dollar than that of other companies. Their central focii are global poverty, energy, and the environment.
Google Grants is also offering in-kind donations of advertising space for non-profit organizations in the US. If you are involved in the non-profit sector, you should check to see if your organization is eligible. I've just applied for my organization, the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Also of interest is that Google seems to be working on a payment service, Google Accounts, ostensibly meant to challenge Paypal.
I am hopeful that over the coming years, employees within Google will think in greater detail about the ultimate consequences and potential of Artificial General Intelligence, leading them to support risk-mediation organizations such as the Singularity Institute. Of particular interest is that Ray Kurzweil recently gave a talk at Google to promote his new book, The Singularity is Near. There is also the observation that Google has internally been using prediction markets to create consensus estimates on the probability of given events, demonstrating a serious interest in the future. Will the Singularity Institute be getting more attention from Google and similar progressive companies in coming years? We aren't counting on it, but it sure would be nice!
January 24th, 2012 - 13:33
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May 21st, 2012 - 12:19
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