FLI Request for Proposals: Religious Projects Tackling the Challenges Posed by the AGI Race

web

Future of Life Institute·futureoflife.org/grant-program/rfp-on-religious-projects/

Credibility Rating

3/5

Good(3)

Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.

Rating inherited from publication venue: Future of Life Institute

This is a Future of Life Institute grant RFP seeking to fund religious organizations and leaders to engage with AI safety concerns, particularly around AGI development risks and the erosion of human control — a novel governance approach leveraging faith communities as moral stakeholders.

Metadata

Importance: 38/100guidance documentreference

Summary

The Future of Life Institute is soliciting grant proposals from religious organizations and leaders to address risks from rapid AI development, including AGI races that concentrate power and erode human control. Projects should focus on educating religious communities, grassroots outreach, or establishing moral red lines around AI development. The program emphasizes fast-moving initiatives with visible results within a year.

Key Points

•FLI seeks to fund religious initiatives that provide moral leadership and red lines against uncontrolled AGI development and power concentration.
•Two funding streams: (1) educating/engaging specific religious groups on AI, and (2) grassroots public outreach helping communities protect their values.
•Proposals must identify moral red lines — specific AI uses considered unacceptable — drawing on religious and ethical frameworks.
•The program reflects concern that AI development is outpacing societal preparedness and that religious leaders offer unique moral authority.
•Deadline is February 2, 2026; FLI prioritizes projects showing early results within one year.

Cached Content Preview

HTTP 200Fetched Apr 11, 202620 KB

All Grant Programs Request for Proposals on religious projects tackling the challenges posed by the AGI race 

 FLI is looking to support impact-oriented religious initiatives to avert the risks from rapid AI development, as well as religious projects promoting pro-human visions of the future. Status: Closed for submissions Deadline: 2 February 2026, 23:59 EST Full title: Request for Proposals on religious projects tackling the challenges posed by the AGI race 

 See below for our project priorities and full eligibility criteria. Please direct any questions about this grant program to grants@futureoflife.org.

 Request for Proposal I. Executive Summary

 The major artificial intelligence corporations are racing to develop systems that not merely exceed humans at particular cognitive tasks, but which are also general-purpose, superhuman at most tasks, and, crucially, autonomous enough to erode meaningful human control and replace human labour. This race is soaking up unprecedented amounts of capital, data and energy, and concentrating power in ever fewer hands; fewer and fewer people are getting a say in what the future will look like. Meanwhile, as new capability benchmarks and levels of agency are reached, myriad new risks to humanity are introduced, for which the world is almost entirely unprepared. The need has never been greater for wiser leadership, to provide moral red lines in order to avert peril. Religious leaders can provide this in unique ways. Equally, different groups with deeply held and fundamentally distinctive worldviews must get moving now to ensure that they can continue to pursue and protect their own particular visions of the good into the future. The time for religious groups to step up is now.

 Initiatives supported by this program might involve academic research, policy efforts, public awareness campaigns, detailed surveying and polling of religious opinion on AI, the creation of resources and projects to equip leaders, policy efforts, public awareness campaigns, workshops, debates, forums or other convenings of academics and faith leaders at local, national and even regional levels. Responding to the speed of AI developments, FLI will look to support fast-moving initiatives whose early results can be seen within a year. 

 We are looking to support projects that focus on either:

 Working to educate and engage different specific religious groups, bringing them to the table in the fight for a positive AI future.

 Public outreach and organization on AI issues at a religious grassroots level, helping them to make their voices heard and protect their communities and values.

 For proposals in either of these two “streams”, we are looking for grants that seek to grow and deepen the movement to deliver positive futures with AI. These are futures where advanced AI systems benefit everyone as tools, rather than as unpredictable and uncontrollable systems designed to replace people wholesale.

 Among other things, we require pro

... (truncated, 20 KB total)

Resource ID: 200209e9a416cce5