Hi
My name is Mikhail Samin (friends and family usually call me Misha, occasionally I use @Mihonarium on social media).

I'm an effective altruist, and I worry about existential risks endangering the future of humanity. I want the universe not to lose most of its value.

I took the Giving What We Can pledge to donate at least 10% of my income for the rest of my life or until the day I retire (why?) and donated >$100k.

My current research interests are focused on AI alignment and AI governance. I'm always happy to talk to policymakers and researchers and get them in touch with other experts and think tanks. Numerous AI Safety researchers told me that they were able to improve their understanding of the alignment problem by talking to me.

I believe global coordination is necessary to mitigate the risks from advanced AI systems.
Previously
Printing Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality in Russian
I've launched a crowdfunding campaign to print a book by Eliezer Yudkowsky (in English: hpmor.com), which became the most funded crowdfunding campaign in the history of Russia, with a record-breaking number of backers. As a result, I printed 63 010 books, hundreds of thousands of people read the book online, and I gave printed copies to thousands of winners of olympiads in maths, computer science, physics, etc., promoting the ideas of effective altruism among among individuals with high potential and directing their attention to the fascinating problem of AI safety.
AudD
AudD is a music recognition technology company. As the founder and CEO, I brought it to be the default industry solution. It holds the #1 position for the Google "Music recognition API" query, clients include Warner Music Group, Sony, and many other music and tech leaders. The primary service is music identification for audio files and live streams. Because of it, I was able to donate more than $100k to high-impact nonprofits. Try the Chrome extension or visit audd.io for more info.

In the past, I've also started a project to translate 80,000 Hours, a career guide that helps to find a fulfilling career that does good, into Russian. The impact and the effectiveness aside, for a year, I was the head of the Russian Pastafarian Church: a movement claiming to be a parodu religion, with 215 000 members in Russia at the time, trying to increase separation between religious organisations and the state. I was a political activist and a human rights advocate. I studied relevant Russian and international law and wrote appeals that won cases against the Russian government in courts; I was able to protect people from unlawful police action. I co-founded the Moscow branch of the "Vesna" democratic movement, coordinated election observers in a Moscow district, wrote dissenting opinions for membees of electoral commisions, helped Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, helped Telegram with internet censorship circumvention, and participated in and organised protests and campaigns. The large-scale goal was to build a civil society and turn Russia into a democracy through nonviolent resistance. This goal wasn't achieved, but some of the more local campaigns were successful. That felt important and was also mostly fun- except for being detained by the police. And I estimate that there's maybe a 30% chance the Russian authorities will throw me in prison if I visit Russia.
And I've written some code, including backend services that responded to requests in fractions of milliseconds and chatbots that were handling millions of DMs every day.
Want to get in touch?
Email me (ms[аt]contact[dоt]ms) or contact me on social media. I'd love to help you with a project that seems to help humanity. I enjoy answering interesting questions, participating in podcasts, discussing AI Safety and the future, and meeting interesting people.