Transformative AI Fund

EA Funds recently closed the Long-Term Future Fund and launched the Transformative AI Fund in its stead; you may read more about the decision here.

We make early-stage grants to individuals, new organizations, and existing organizations with new projects, addressing transformative AI, with a primary focus on reducing global catastrophic risks from advanced AI systems.

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About the fund

The Transformative AI Fund provides funding that is early-stage, fast, and tolerant of failure. We aim to be a go-to funder for new projects addressing transformative AI, whether from an individual, a new organization, or an existing organization starting something new. Grants are typically in the $10k-$150k range and rarely exceed $300k. We are always open to applications. The fund is run by a full-time team at EA Funds.

The Fund managers can be contacted at transformativeai[at]effectivealtruismfunds.org

Focus areas

The fund has a broad remit to make grants that help the transition to transformative AI go well. The fund primarily supports early-stage work. Most of our grants aim to reduce global catastrophic risks from advanced artificial intelligence. We also welcome applications addressing other implications of transformative AI, such as flourishing futures and artificial sentience. We support:

Individuals, new organizations, and existing organizations getting a new project off the ground, typically with grants in the $10k-$150k range, and rarely exceeding $300k
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, we do not fund biosecurity or nuclear work beyond their intersections with AI.

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

01You are skeptical that AI will be transformative 02You have different views about how to approach transformative AI 03You don't think work on transformative AI is tractable enough 04You have a preference for supporting more established organizations 05You have identified projects or interventions that seem more promising to you than our grants

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.