Support projects addressing transformative AI

 Donate 

Charities > Safeguarding the Future > Transformative AI Fund

The EA Funds Long-Term Future Fund is a professionally managed philanthropic fund which aims to help the transition to transformative AI go well.

Their current focus is on making grants that reduce global catastrophic risks from advanced artificial intelligence. They also seek to address other implications of transformative AI, such as flourishing futures and artificial sentience.

The fund is run by a full-time team at EA Funds, headed by Lowe Lundin. Broadly speaking, they support:

  • Individuals, new organizations, and existing organizations getting a new project off the ground

  • Training for researchers or practitioners, and infrastructure, such as field-building, for people working on addressing transformative AI

  • Projects that directly contribute to reducing catastrophic risks from transformative AI through technical research, policy analysis, forecasting, advocacy, and demonstration projects

  • Projects addressing other neglected implications of transformative AI, such as flourishing futures and digital sentience (though we expect these to be a minority of grants given the lower number of applications we anticipate seeing in that area)

For now, they do not fund biosecurity or nuclear work beyond their intersections with AI.

For more information about the Transformative AI Fund and how their donations are allocated, visit the EA Funds website.

As recommended by

Why donate to this fund?

The transition to advanced AI could be among the most important events in history, and it is not guaranteed to go well. Work to reduce catastrophic risks from advanced AI, and to make the transition go well more broadly, remains young and small relative to the stakes.

Funding at the earliest stages can have an outsized impact. Most new organizations start with small checks, and at this size, funding is often all-or-nothing: a first $25k grant can be the difference between a pilot running or not.

The field has built fellowships, courses, and research programs to develop people, but less to start the organizations that employ them. For a number of good reasons, many institutional funders primarily consider grants above certain sizes, but larger checks to established organizations presuppose the initial small checks that got those organizations started.

By pooling donations, the fund lets donors of all sizes back early-stage work with no time commitment required, drawing on a full-time team that sees thousands of applications and tracks their outcomes.

Why you might choose not to donate to this fund

  • This fund focuses almost exclusively on AI and its implications. If you doubt that AI will be a particularly transformative technology, or that it poses significant risks, then little of what we fund will look valuable to you, and you should probably donate elsewhere.

  • Most of the TAIF’s grants aim to reduce global catastrophic risks. Some donors instead prioritize other implications of transformative AI: making good futures great, or the moral status of digital minds. The TAIF is open to work in these areas but expect it to be a small minority of grants. Donors with strong views here should consider directly supporting organizations working toward those outcomes.

  • It is difficult to know whether actions the TAIF supports actually reduce risks from advanced AI, or otherwise put us on a better trajectory. To get feedback on their work, organizations must rely on proxy measures. For example, are researchers making progress on relevant technical questions? Are policymakers engaging with their proposals? Success on these kinds of proxies doesn’t necessarily translate into a safer transition. Donors who prefer tractable causes with strong feedback loops could consider giving to the Global Health and Development Fund or the Animal Welfare Fund.

  • This fund focuses on early-stage organizations and individuals. Most of the TAIF’s grants will go to projects with short track records, often as their first funder. If you prefer established organizations with established track records, this fund is not designed for you.

  • Part-time donors are more likely to have worse deal flow and thus be more likely to see what others are already seeing. However, well-informed donors with a good understanding of the space may be in a position to identify opportunities that are more promising than the fund's recommendations. These donors may be able to have a greater impact by continuing to conduct their own research rather than deferring to fund managers.