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November 2019: Long-Term Future Fund Grants
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This is a grant payout report from the EA Long-Term Future Fund (November 2019), distributing $471,000 across 15 grantees including several AI safety researchers, biosecurity projects, and community-building efforts relevant to existential risk reduction.
Metadata
Importance: 38/100organizational reportnews
Summary
The EA Long-Term Future Fund distributed approximately $471,000 to 15 grantees in November 2019, supporting independent AI safety research, biosecurity work, community infrastructure, and longtermist policy advocacy. Grants ranged from $10,000 to $62,000 and covered technical research (agent foundations, AI forecasting), field-building (AI Safety Camp Toronto), and support services (subsidized therapy for EA workers). The report includes brief rationales for each grant by fund manager Oliver Habryka.
Key Points
- •15 grantees received a total of ~$471,000, with individual grants ranging from $10,000 to $62,000.
- •Technical AI safety grants included work on agent foundations (Daniel Demski), abstraction theory for embedded agency (John Wentworth), and AI Safety Via Debate (Joe Collman).
- •Field-building grants supported AI Safety Camp Toronto, independent researchers transitioning into AI safety, and biosecurity white-space analysis.
- •Non-technical grants included subsidized therapy for EA workers, longtermist UK policy advocacy, and a note-taking tool (Roam Research) used by EA researchers.
- •The report was intentionally brief due to internal restructuring and time constraints, with more detailed writeups promised as a follow-up.
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Funds Long-Term Future Fund November 2019: Long-Term Future Fund Grants November 2019: Long-Term Future Fund Grants
Payout Date: November 22, 2019 Total grants: USD 466,000 Number of grantees: 15 Since we’ve been dealing with a larger-than-usual set of commitments for the Long-Term Future Fund, including some internal restructuring, discussion of fund scope, and coordination of fundraising initiatives, we did not end up having enough time to produce a set of writeups with as much detail as those written for past rounds.
As a result, the following report consists of a relatively straightforward list of the grants we made, with short explanations of the reasoning behind them. I (Oliver Habryka) am planning to follow this up in a few weeks with more detailed explanations of my reasoning, and other fund members might do the same. I will still be available to respond to comments and questions in the comment section.
Grant Recipients
Grants Made By the Long-Term Future Fund
Each grant recipient is followed by the size of the grant and their one-sentence description of their project. All of these grants have been made.
Damon Pourtahmaseb-Sasi ($40,000): Subsidized therapy/coaching/mediation for those working on the future of humanity.
Tegan McCaslin ($40,000): Conducting independent research into AI forecasting and strategy questions.
Vojtěch Kovařík ($43,000): Research funding for a year, to enable a transition to AI safety work.
Jaspreet Pannu ($18,000): Surveying the neglectedness of broad-spectrum antiviral development.
John Wentworth ($30,000): Build a theory of abstraction for embedded agency using real-world systems for a tight feedback loop.
Elizabeth E. Van Nostrand ($19,000): Create a toolkit to bootstrap from zero to competence in ambiguous fields.
Daniel Demski ($30,000): Independent research on agent foundations.
Sam Hilton ($62,000): Supporting the rights of future generations in UK policy and politics.
Topos Institute ($50,000): A summit for the world's leading applied category theorists to engage with human flourishing experts.
Jason Crawford ($25,000): Tell the story of human progress to the world, and promote progress as a moral imperative.
Kyle Fish ($30.000): Identifying white space opportunities for technical projects to improve biosecurity.
AI Safety Camp Toronto ($29,000): AISC Toronto brings together aspiring researchers to work on concrete problems in AI safety.
Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg ($20,000): Writing fiction to convey EA and rationality-related topics.
Roam Research ($20,000): A note-taking tool for networked thought, actively used by many EA researchers.
Joe Collman ($10,000): Investigation of AI Safety Via Debate and ML training.
Total distributed: $471,000
Writeups by Oliver Habryka
Damon Pourtahmaseb-Sasi ($40,000)
Subsidized therapy/coaching/mediation for those working on the future of humanity.
We are aware of a significant number o
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