Vipul Naik
Quick Assessment
Section titled “Quick Assessment”| Attribute | Assessment |
|---|---|
| Role | Mathematician, data scientist, EA funder, and knowledge infrastructure builder |
| Key Projects | Donations List WebsiteDonations List WebsiteComprehensive documentation of an open-source database tracking $72.8B in philanthropic donations (1969-2023) across 75+ donors, with particular coverage of EA/AI safety funding. The page thoroughl...Quality: 52/100 (tracking $72.8B), Contract Work Portal ($255K funded), Wikipedia ViewsWikipedia ViewsThis article provides a comprehensive overview of Wikipedia pageview analytics tools and their declining traffic due to AI summaries reducing direct visits. While well-documented, it's primarily ab...Quality: 38/100, Timelines WikiTimelines WikiTimelines Wiki is a specialized MediaWiki project documenting chronological histories of AI safety and EA organizations, created by Issa Rice with funding from Vipul Naik in 2017. While useful as a...Quality: 45/100 (funded), Open Borders advocacy |
| Background | Ph.D. Mathematics (University of Chicago, 2013); B.Sc. Mathematics & CS (Chennai Mathematical Institute); IMO silver medalist |
| AI Safety Work | Researcher at MIRIOrganizationMIRIComprehensive organizational history documenting MIRI's trajectory from pioneering AI safety research (2000-2020) to policy advocacy after acknowledging research failure, with detailed financial da...Quality: 50/100; created Timeline of AI Safety; funds AI safety research through contract work |
| Funding Model | Individual funding of contract researchers (Sebastian Sanchez ≈$143K, Issa RiceIssa RiceIssa Rice is an independent researcher who has created valuable knowledge infrastructure tools like Timelines Wiki and AI Watch for the EA and AI safety communities, though his work focuses on data...Quality: 45/100 ≈$80K) for public knowledge infrastructure |
| Community Role | Active contributor to LessWrongLesswrongLessWrong is a rationality-focused community blog founded in 2009 that has influenced AI safety discourse, receiving $5M+ in funding and serving as the origin point for ~31% of EA survey respondent...Quality: 44/100, EA Forum, Wikipedia; known for data-driven analysis |
Key Links
Section titled “Key Links”| Source | Link |
|---|---|
| Official Website | vipulnaik.com |
| Wikipedia | User:Vipul |
| GitHub | github.com/vipulnaik |
| Donations List Website | donations.vipulnaik.com |
| Contract Work Portal | contractwork.vipulnaik.com |
| EA Forum Profile | forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/vipulnaik |
Overview
Section titled “Overview”Vipul Naik is an Indian-American mathematician, data scientist, and effective altruism researcher who has created influential public knowledge infrastructure and funded contract research in EA and AI safety. Born in 1986 in Delhi, India, Naik distinguished himself early as a two-time International Mathematical Olympiad silver medalist before pursuing graduate studies in mathematics at the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2013.1
Rather than pursuing a conventional academic career, Naik has focused on building knowledge infrastructure and funding independent research through a unique individual funding model. His major projects include the Donations List Website, which tracks over $72.8 billion in philanthropic donations, and the Contract Work Portal, through which he has funded approximately $255,000 in research work.2 His top contract workers include Sebastian Sanchez (approximately $143,000) and Issa Rice (approximately $80,000), who create timelines, data infrastructure, and Wikipedia content on topics relevant to effective altruism and existential risk.3
Naik’s work bridges multiple communities including effective altruism, rationality, open borders advocacy, and AI safety. He has contributed research to the Machine Intelligence Research InstituteOrganizationMIRIComprehensive organizational history documenting MIRI's trajectory from pioneering AI safety research (2000-2020) to policy advocacy after acknowledging research failure, with detailed financial da...Quality: 50/100, created the Timeline of AI Safety, and maintains extensive documentation of philanthropic giving patterns in the EA ecosystem. His analytical approach emphasizes transparency, data collection, and systematic documentation, making previously opaque information about donations and research priorities accessible to the broader community.4
Education and Early Career
Section titled “Education and Early Career”Naik’s mathematical talent emerged early in his education in Delhi, where he attended Delhi Public School, Noida from 1990 to 2004.5 During his final two years of high school, he became active in mathematics olympiads, clearing the Indian National Mathematical Olympiad at the end of 11th grade. He represented India at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 2003 in Tokyo, Japan and 2004 in Athens, Greece, winning silver medals both times with scores that placed him in the top tier of international competitors.6 He also cleared regional rounds of informatics and physics olympiads, though he did not advance to the national level in those competitions.7
From 2004 to 2007, Naik pursued undergraduate studies at Chennai Mathematical Institute in Siruseri, near Chennai, Tamil Nadu, earning a B.Sc. (Honours) in mathematics and computer science.8 He then entered the mathematics Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago in 2007, earning his M.S. in August 2009 and completing his Ph.D. in December 2013.9
During his graduate studies, Naik’s interests began to expand beyond pure mathematics. In December 2009, he encountered GiveWell’sOpen PhilanthropyOpen Philanthropy rebranded to Coefficient Giving in November 2025. See the Coefficient Giving page for current information. work and began making donations to GiveWell-recommended charities like VillageReach through 2010.10 Between April 2010 and August 2011, he engaged extensively with economics and rationality blogs including EconLog, Cafe Hayek, Marginal Revolution, Overcoming Bias, and LessWrongLesswrongLessWrong is a rationality-focused community blog founded in 2009 that has influenced AI safety discourse, receiving $5M+ in funding and serving as the origin point for ~31% of EA survey respondent...Quality: 44/100.11 This period marked the beginning of his involvement with the effective altruism and rationality communities that would shape his later work.
Naik’s academic research focused on group theory, with some work in computational intelligence and genetic programming resulting in several peer-reviewed publications between 2011 and 2015.12 However, he later described his Ph.D. experience as producing insufficient publishable results in pure mathematics, leading him to leave academia in the middle to late stages of his fifth year.13 One of his lasting contributions to mathematics education is the Group Properties Wiki (groupprops), which has received between 1.8 and 6 million pageviews and serves as a resource for group theory students and researchers.14
Major Projects and Knowledge Infrastructure
Section titled “Major Projects and Knowledge Infrastructure”Donations List Website
Section titled “Donations List Website”The Donations List Website (donations.vipulnaik.com) is perhaps Naik’s most ambitious project, tracking over $72.8 billion in public donations with a focus on causes relevant to effective altruism. Development began in January 2017, with ongoing updates and expansions.15 The database includes donations from major EA funders like Open PhilanthropyOpen PhilanthropyOpen Philanthropy rebranded to Coefficient Giving in November 2025. See the Coefficient Giving page for current information., as well as high-profile individual donors such as Vitalik Buterin and others whose giving patterns intersect with EA causes.16
The website has become an important resource for EA community analysis. For example, in 2023, the GiveWiki used Naik’s donation database to rank 22 AI safety organizations, scoring them between 186 and 213 in their assessment.17 The database is described by community members as “excellent” for analyzing grant patterns and understanding funding flows in the EA ecosystem.18
Naik funded approximately $645 of Issa Rice’s work on the Donations List Website, covering OpenPhil tracking and data entry.19 The site continues to be updated with preliminary data, with Naik requesting community feedback on its utility and accuracy through EA Forum posts.20
Contract Work Portal
Section titled “Contract Work Portal”Through the Contract Work Portal (contractwork.vipulnaik.com), Naik has funded approximately $255,000 in independent research and knowledge creation since its inception.21 This represents a unique funding model in the EA ecosystem: individual patronage of contract researchers working on public goods like Timelines WikiTimelines WikiTimelines Wiki is a specialized MediaWiki project documenting chronological histories of AI safety and EA organizations, created by Issa Rice with funding from Vipul Naik in 2017. While useful as a...Quality: 45/100, Wikipedia articles, and data infrastructure.
His largest contract recipients include:
- Sebastian Sanchez: approximately $143,000
- Issa Rice: approximately $80,00022
Payment documentation shows the detailed nature of this work. For example, Issa Rice received $354.03 in July 2020, $306.63 in August 2020, and $334.62 in November 2020 for tasks ranging from grant monitoring to tax tools development, with hourly rates between $5 and $9.50.23 Recent activity includes payments to Gabriel Bobis in December 2024 and ongoing tax documentation work through early 2025.24
The contract work covers diverse topics including AI safety, global catastrophic risks, migration policy, and organizational timelines.25 This funding model allows researchers to produce comprehensive public documentation that might not be funded through traditional grant mechanisms due to the difficulty of demonstrating immediate impact or fitting into established funding categories.
Wikipedia Views and Other Analytics
Section titled “Wikipedia Views and Other Analytics”Naik created Wikipedia Views (wikipediaviews.org), an analytics platform for tracking Wikipedia article traffic patterns.26 This tool serves researchers and organizations trying to understand public interest in various topics and has been used to analyze trends in EA-related articles and concepts.
He also maintains analytics.vipulnaik.com, which provides data analysis across his various projects, and has conducted detailed analyses of EA Forum web traffic using Google Analytics data.27 His June 2015 blog post forecasted 150,000 pageviews for July 2015, demonstrating his focus on quantitative tracking and prediction.28
Open Borders Advocacy
Section titled “Open Borders Advocacy”Naik has been a prominent advocate for open borders, co-authoring with Bryan Caplan the chapter “A Radical Case for Open Borders” published in The Economics of Immigration (Oxford University Press, 2015).29 The chapter argues that open borders would create massive poverty reduction and benefit most native-born citizens, presenting economic evidence for liberalized immigration policies.30
He maintains the Open Borders website (openborders.info), which serves as a hub for discussion and argument collation on migration policy.31 The 2015 publication was cited as a tipping point for increased audience growth for the Open Borders website.32 The academic chapter continues to receive citations, with 80 in October 2024 and ongoing activity into 2025-2026.33
AI Safety and Existential Risk Work
Section titled “AI Safety and Existential Risk Work”Naik has contributed to AI safety research and infrastructure in several ways. He worked as a researcher at the Machine Intelligence Research InstituteOrganizationMIRIComprehensive organizational history documenting MIRI's trajectory from pioneering AI safety research (2000-2020) to policy advocacy after acknowledging research failure, with detailed financial da...Quality: 50/100, contributing to AI safety efforts focused on mitigating existential risks from misaligned artificial general intelligence.34 In 2014, he completed contract work for MIRI on computation distribution and forecasting.35 He also made a $500 donation to MIRI on December 22, 2018.36
One of his most significant contributions to AI safety is the Timeline of AI Safety, originally written in 2017 with updates including October 1, 2024.37 The timeline documents milestones in AI alignmentAlignmentComprehensive review of AI alignment approaches finding current methods (RLHF, Constitutional AI) achieve 75-90% effectiveness on existing systems but face critical scalability challenges, with ove...Quality: 91/100 and existential risk mitigation, providing historical context for the field’s development. He also authored the Timeline of Machine Intelligence Research Institute in July 2025, chronicling the organization’s history and evolution.38
Through his contract work portal, Naik has funded research on AI safety and global catastrophic risks.39 He maintains tracking of donations to AI safety organizations including the AI Safety Camp (which received $3,667 from Simon Möller in 2022 for technical AI safetyTechnical Ai SafetyThis page contains only code/component references with no actual content about technical AI safety. The page is a stub that imports React components but provides no information, analysis, or substa... projects)40 and the Center for Human-Compatible AILab AcademicCHAICHAI is UC Berkeley's AI safety research center founded by Stuart Russell in 2016, pioneering cooperative inverse reinforcement learning and human-compatible AI frameworks. The center has trained 3...Quality: 37/100 at UC Berkeley, which focuses on value alignment research.41
In his role as a documentarian of AI safety funding, Naik has disclosed conflicts of interest regarding donations received by AnthropicLabAnthropicComprehensive profile of Anthropic, founded in 2021 by seven former OpenAI researchers (Dario and Daniela Amodei, Chris Olah, Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish) with early funding...Quality: 51/100, noting his personal interest and inability to fully disclose some details.42 He has also discussed considerations in his relationship with the Free Migration Project that might generate conflicts of interest, demonstrating awareness of how his funding relationships might affect his analysis.43
Effective Altruism Community Involvement
Section titled “Effective Altruism Community Involvement”Naik is an active and respected contributor to the Effective Altruism Forum and LessWrongLesswrongLessWrong is a rationality-focused community blog founded in 2009 that has influenced AI safety discourse, receiving $5M+ in funding and serving as the origin point for ~31% of EA survey respondent...Quality: 44/100, known for data-driven analysis and transparency efforts. Community members describe him as a high-quality analyst and funder of useful tools, though some note the high effort required for uncertain impact.44
His EA Forum posts include analyses of forum traffic patterns, showing that despite growth in the EA movement, the forum did not experience traffic spikes around EA GlobalEa GlobalEA Global is a series of selective conferences organized by the Centre for Effective Altruism that connects committed EA practitioners to collaborate on global challenges, with AI safety becoming i...Quality: 38/100 or major events—a finding that sparked discussion about content strategy and community growth.45 The 2015 EA Survey reported 350 self-reported EA Forum users, and Naik’s analysis suggested the need for more “evergreen” content to sustain engagement.46
Naik has written on core EA topics including donation timing and saving on modest incomes. His summary on “donating now vs. later” (December 15, 2014) received 8 likes and 10 comments, while his view on “modest incomes and saving” (March 24, 2014) received 31 likes and 70 comments, indicating strong community engagement.47 He has also published guest posts on the GiveWell blog, including one on August 5, 2011 during the early formation of the EA movement.48
His documented influence on donations includes analyses like “Understanding Open Philanthropy’s work on migration policy” (November 19, 2021) and “My Q1 2019 EA Hotel donation” (March 31, 2019), providing transparency about his own giving and reasoning.49
Cognito Mentoring and Educational Projects
Section titled “Cognito Mentoring and Educational Projects”In December 2013, Naik co-founded Cognito Mentoring with Jonah Sinick as a free personalized advising service for intellectually curious students, announced on LessWrongLesswrongLessWrong is a rationality-focused community blog founded in 2009 that has influenced AI safety discourse, receiving $5M+ in funding and serving as the origin point for ~31% of EA survey respondent...Quality: 44/100 to target that community’s readership.50 The service aimed to improve learning, productivity, and life choices, focusing on high-potential students with whom the founders could relate based on their own experiences.51
Cognito Mentoring provided substantive interaction with over 50 advisees and published blog posts and an information wiki.52 However, by mid-March 2014, the service shifted from charging advisees (deemed non-viable) to focusing on informational content and philanthropic funding.53 The challenges included limited cash reserves, difficulty securing grants for a non-standard educational model, and lack of demonstrated traction at scale—factors that led funders to view it skeptically.54
Naik acknowledged gaps in his own knowledge about technology, entrepreneurship, and job environments despite broad theoretical understanding, valuing firsthand experience for effective advising.55 By mid-2014, Cognito Mentoring had scaled back to maintenance mode, with Naik continuing administrative roles for existing advisees while pursuing other projects.56
Naik also maintains educational resources for mathematics olympiad preparation, including India-specific FAQs (prepared in 2006, though noted as outdated) and generic guidance planned for updates to include modern resources like Brilliant.org and Art of Problem Solving.57
Personal Profile and Approach
Section titled “Personal Profile and Approach”Naik describes his cognitive profile as having an IQ around 137 (based on Raven’s tests, approximately 2.5 standard deviations above the UK median), with stronger verbal than visuospatial abilities and good short-term memory.58 He notes that his face recognition ability is approximately 1 standard deviation below the median.59
His personality profile aligns with high openness to experience, conscientiousness, and introversion, with midway agreeableness and low neuroticism on the Big Five model.60 On Myers-Briggs assessments, he falls between INTJ and INFP.61 His moral profile aligns with libertarians, scoring low on most dimensions of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire.62
These personal characteristics inform his approach to research and funding: systematic, data-focused, valuing transparency and comprehensive documentation, and preferring independent work on long-term knowledge infrastructure projects over traditional employment or academic paths.
Funding Philosophy and Financial Situation
Section titled “Funding Philosophy and Financial Situation”Naik’s approach to funding reflects both his personal financial constraints and his philosophy about the value of independent research. In blog posts about the Forecasting Research InstituteOrganizationForecasting Research Institute (FRI)FRI's XPT tournament found superforecasters gave 9.7% average probability to AI progress outcomes that occurred vs 24.6% from domain experts, suggesting superforecasters systematically underestimat...Quality: 55/100 (FMP), he discusses the financial situation of small EA organizations, noting the high marginal value of donations due to staff expansion and fundraising needs.63 He predicts that clarity about AI growth trajectories may emerge by 2025, though he does not expect explosive AI progress in the next decade.64
He describes FMP as having a “small” budget in philanthropic terms, with current donations having particularly high marginal value due to the timing of organizational needs.65 Naik trades off funding opportunities against future donation targets, but notes that rare moments of high donation value—like supporting organizations during critical expansion phases—justify immediate giving.66
For Cognito Mentoring, Naik relied on contract work income rather than regular employment, noting that this approach was “eating into savings” and proved unsustainable without either successful charging of advisees or philanthropic grants.67 The difficulty of securing grants stemmed from the project’s novelty and lack of fit with standard educational funding models.68
Criticisms and Limitations
Section titled “Criticisms and Limitations”Wikipedia Editing Controversy
Section titled “Wikipedia Editing Controversy”Naik reduced his Wikipedia editing activity starting in March 2017 due to “a controversy at Wikipedia surrounding sponsored Wikipedia editing.”69 While details of the controversy are not extensively documented in available sources, it appears related to questions about whether his funded contract work on Wikipedia articles constituted undisclosed paid editing, which violates Wikipedia policies.
Uncertain Impact of Projects
Section titled “Uncertain Impact of Projects”Community members on the EA Forum have noted that some of Naik’s projects involve “a huge amount of work for what seems like a somewhat uncertain impact.”70 The Donations List Website and other infrastructure projects require extensive data collection and maintenance but may not produce clear, measurable improvements in EA decision-making or resource allocation.
Academic Productivity
Section titled “Academic Productivity”Naik himself acknowledges that his Ph.D. research did not produce substantial publishable results in pure mathematics, leading to his departure from academia.71 While he shifted focus to applied work and community infrastructure, this represents a departure from his original academic trajectory and the expectations typically associated with completing a mathematics Ph.D. from a prestigious program like the University of Chicago.
Funding Model Sustainability
Section titled “Funding Model Sustainability”The individual funding model Naik employs for contract work is highly dependent on his personal financial situation and priorities. Unlike institutional funding sources, there is no guarantee of continuity, no formal review process, and limited accountability mechanisms beyond Naik’s personal judgment. This makes the work sustainable only as long as Naik has both the resources and inclination to continue it.
Potential Biases in Donation Tracking
Section titled “Potential Biases in Donation Tracking”As both a donor to organizations like AnthropicLabAnthropicComprehensive profile of Anthropic, founded in 2021 by seven former OpenAI researchers (Dario and Daniela Amodei, Chris Olah, Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish) with early funding...Quality: 51/100 and FMP and the maintainer of donation databases tracking these organizations, Naik faces potential conflicts of interest. He has disclosed these conflicts, noting his “personal interest” and “inability to fully disclose some details” regarding Anthropic.72 However, the structural issue remains: his analytical work on EA funding patterns is produced by someone who is simultaneously a participant in that funding ecosystem.
Key Uncertainties
Section titled “Key Uncertainties”Several significant uncertainties surround Naik’s work and its long-term impact:
Project Continuity: It is unclear how long Naik will continue funding contract research or maintaining his various knowledge infrastructure projects. The sustainability depends on his personal financial situation, professional commitments, and ongoing interest in these topics.
Counterfactual Impact: While the Donations List Website and other projects provide valuable transparency, it is uncertain whether they meaningfully change EA funding decisions or improve resource allocation. The information may be used primarily by researchers and observers rather than decision-makers at major funding organizations.
AI Safety Contributions: Naik’s role in AI safety has been primarily as a documentarian (timelines), funder of related research, and former MIRI researcher. The extent to which these contributions advance technical AI safety researchCruxTechnical AI Safety ResearchTechnical AI safety research encompasses six major agendas (mechanistic interpretability, scalable oversight, AI control, evaluations, agent foundations, and robustness) with 500+ researchers and $...Quality: 66/100 or improve AI governanceAi GovernanceThis page contains only component imports with no actual content - it displays dynamically loaded data from an external source that cannot be evaluated. remains unclear.
Wikipedia Controversy Details: The specifics of the 2017 Wikipedia editing controversy are not fully documented in available sources, leaving questions about what policies were violated, how the situation was resolved, and whether it affects the legitimacy of Wikipedia content produced through Naik’s contract work funding.
Forecasting Track Record: While Naik has made public predictions (announced in a Facebook post and other venues), no comprehensive calibration data, Brier scores, or systematic evaluation of his forecasting accuracy is available.73 His June 2015 forecast of 150,000 pageviews for July 2015 has not been evaluated for accuracy.74
Replicability of Funding Model: It remains uncertain whether Naik’s individual patronage model for contract research could be replicated by others or scaled beyond his personal capacity, or whether it represents a unique arrangement dependent on his specific situation and relationships.
Current Status and Recent Developments
Section titled “Current Status and Recent Developments”As of early 2025, Naik works as a data scientist and software engineer at The Arena Group, a media and technology company that acquired LiftIgniter.75 His contract work portal remains active, with recent payments processed in December 2024 to Gabriel Bobis and tax documentation work continuing through early 2025.76
His timelines work continues to be updated, with the Timeline of MIRI updated as recently as July 2025 and the Timeline of AI Safety updated in October 2024.77 The Donations List Website continues to receive updates with preliminary data as donations are publicly disclosed.78
On his personal blog, Naik continues to write about EA funding priorities, organizational analysis, and his donation decisions. Posts from 2021 discuss topics like Open Philanthropy’s migration work and the 2021 Open Borders Conference.79 His analytical work on EA funding patterns and organizational effectiveness remains a resource for community members trying to understand the EA ecosystem.