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Philanthropy Daily - Genius Grants
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Tangentially relevant to AI safety funding discussions; this piece critiques philanthropic grant-making practices, which may offer perspective on how AI safety research funding decisions are structured and evaluated.
Metadata
Importance: 8/100opinion piececommentary
Summary
A critical commentary on the MacArthur Foundation's 'Genius Grants' (MacArthur Fellows Program), examining whether these prestigious no-strings-attached awards actually produce the transformative intellectual contributions they are intended to support. The piece questions the selection criteria and accountability of high-prestige philanthropic grant-making.
Key Points
- •Critiques the MacArthur Fellows Program for lacking accountability and measurable outcomes despite large financial awards
- •Questions whether genius grants actually foster breakthrough work or simply reward already-established reputations
- •Raises concerns about the insularity of selection processes in high-prestige philanthropy
- •Explores broader questions about how philanthropic funding decisions are made and evaluated
- •Suggests that unconditional large grants may not be the most effective form of philanthropic investment
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| MacArthur Foundation | Organization | 65.0 |
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Opinion
# Those unassailable "genius grants"
[](https://philanthropydaily.com/author/martinwooster/)
[Martin Morse Wooster](https://philanthropydaily.com/author/martinwooster/)
4min read
October 30, 2014
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Look at articles about the MacArthur Fellows Program (commonly known as the “genius grants”) and you’ll find two categories of stories. One is where the wide-eyed hack shows up at MacArthur headquarters in Chicago full of wonder about how the selfless, noble program officers are bestowing riches among the struggling artists, who thanks to the foundation, can stop fighting the cat for food and begin to indulge in caviar and champagne. You can tell these articles because there is nearly always a reference to the long-dead television show “The Millionaire.”
Then there’s the hard-hitting reporter who decides that the MacArthur Fellows do little or nothing to advance American culture or science. Sometimes these reporters come across good information, but most of the time, [as Thomas Frank does in Salon](http://www.salon.com/2014/10/05/genius_grant_or_ted_talk_does_a_macarthur_grant_make_a_genius_smarter/), they just rant.
Frank is famous as a champion of the left who firmly believes that the only legitimate political views in our country are from people who think like him. In his view, political discussion is impossible because anyone on the right is either stupid, evil, or a tool who fails to realize that soc
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