Our Grants and Investments

We recommended a grant over three years to support OWID’s work producing high quality data and analysis of global trends like the rise in living standards and effects of COVID-19. This grant will specifically support work tracking trends that are relevant to humanity’s long term prospects.

We recommended a grant to allow GPI to hire pre-docs and post-docs from economics, philosophy, and psychology and publish analysis on how to do the most good.

We recommended a grant to run two pilot studies in order to develop a platform that will allow policymakers to rapidly get reliable estimates about important quantitative parameters to inform policy measures during times of crisis, like during a pandemic. The pilot will focus on evaluating the cost-benefit profile of non-pharmaceutical interventions during pandemics.

We recommended funding to support their longtermist grantmaking.

We recommended a grant to an organization aiming to reduce childhood lead exposure and eliminate childhood lead poisoning worldwide.

We recommended a grant to support the creation of a small research organization that will use probabilistic models to forecast important questions about the future, in particular involving transformative artificial intelligence.

We recommended a grant to create a nuclear winter food scale-up plan which governments can adopt.

We recommended a grant to support Longview Philanthropy creating a longtermist coworking office in London.

We recommended a grant to support 18 months of operations for a longtermist coworking space in Berkeley

We recommended a grant to support researcher salaries, funding for contractors for evaluating AI capabilities, projects like the ELK prizes and workshops, and administrative expenses.

We recommended a grant to support the Legal Priorities Project’s ongoing research and outreach activities. This will allow LPP to pay two new hires and to put on a summer institute for non-US law students in Oxford.

We recommended a grant to support two years of academic research on long-term economic growth.

We recommended a grant to support scholarships for talented and promising high school students to use towards educational opportunities and enrolling in a summer program.

We recommended an investment to support the development of universal CRISPR-based diagnostics, including paper-based diagnostics that can be used in developing-country settings without electricity.

We recommended a grant to support the hiring of several key staff for Dr. Kevin Esvelt’s pandemic prevention work. SecureBio is working to implement universal DNA synthesis screening, build a reliable early warning system, and coordinate the development of improved personal protective equipment and its delivery to essential workers when needed.

We recommended a grant to Cornell University to support Prof. Levine, as well as students and collaborators, to work on alignment theory research at the Cornell math department.

We recommended a grant to pay for research assistants over three years to support the work of a PhD student working on AI safety at Columbia University.

We recommended a grant to support the Institute’s research and policy engagement work on high skilled immigration, biosecurity, and pandemic prevention.

We recommended a grant to support a project aimed at training large language models to represent the probability distribution over question answers in a prediction market.

We recommended a grant to support research that we hope will be used to help strengthen the bioweapons convention and guide proactive actions to better secure those facilities or stop the dangerous work being done there.

We recommended an investment to support the creation of Pretty Good PPE that is comfortable, storable, simple, and inexpensive. PGPPE aims to provide protection that is better than disposable masks and cheaper than both hazmat suits and N95s.

This grant will support one year of operating expenses and salaries at the Legal Priorities Project, a longtermist legal research and field-building organization.

We recommended a grant to support ALTER, an academic research and advocacy organization, which hopes to investigate, demonstrate, and foster useful ways to improve the future in the short term, and to safeguard and improve the long-term trajectory of humanity. The organization's initial focus is building bridges to academia via conferences and grants to find researchers who can focus on AI safety, and on policy for reducing biorisk.

We recommended a grant to support Manifold Markets in building a charity prediction market, as an experiment for enabling effective forecasters to direct altruistic donations.

We recommended a grant to support a competition for work on Eliciting Latent Knowledge, an open problem in AI alignment, for talented high school and college students who are participating in Prometheus Science Bowl.

We recommended an investment to support Helix Nano running preclinical and Phase 1 trials of a pan-variant Covid-19 vaccine.

We recommended a grant to support Giving What We Can’s mission to create a world in which giving effectively and significantly is a cultural norm.

We recommended a grant to support research on how to fine-tune GPT-3 models to identify flaws in other fine-tuned language models' arguments for the correctness of their outputs, and to test whether these help nonexpert humans successfully judge such arguments.

We recommended a grant to support SI’s policy work with the United Nations system on the prevention of existential risks to humanity.

We recommended a grant for general support for their activities, including running conferences, supporting student groups, and maintaining online resources.

We recommended a grant to support Apollo’s work aggregating the views of academic experts in many different fields and making them freely available online.

We recommended a grant to support the development of a cheap, scalable, and decentralized platform for the rapid generation of disease-neutralizing therapeutic antibodies.

We recommended a grant to support outreach to help students to learn about career options, develop their skills, and plan their careers to work on the world’s most pressing problems.

We recommended a grant to support research on the feasibility of inactivating viruses via electromagnetic radiation.

We recommended a grant to support Lightcone’s ongoing projects including running the LessWrong forum, hosting conferences and events, and maintaining an office space for Effective Altruist organizations.

We recommended a grant to support HIA’s work encouraging professional athletes to donate more of their earnings to high impact charities and causes, and to promote a culture of giving among their fans.

We recommended a grant to support BERI in hiring a second core operations employee to contribute to BERI’s work supporting university research groups.

We recommended a grant to support a postdoc and two research assistants for Professor Braumoeller’s MESO Lab for two years to carry out research on international orders and how they affect the probability of war.

We recommended a grant to support Longview’s independent grantmaking on global priorities research, nuclear weapons policy, and other longtermist issues.

We recommended a grant to support the completion of a book which explores the nature of human values and the implications for aligning AI with human preferences.

We recommended a grant to support EffiSciences’s work promoting high impact research on global priorities (e.g. AI safety, biosecurity, and climate change) among French students and academics, and building up a community of people willing to work on important topics.

We recommended an investment to build a communication platform that provably leaks zero metadata.

We recommended a grant to support 1DS’ work on pandemic preparedness, including advocacy for advance market purchase commitments, collaboration with the UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator on challenge studies, and advocacy with 1Day Africa and the West African Health Organization for a global pandemic insurance fund.

We recommended a grant to support the development and application of a Minimum Viable Product of a data-driven approach to improving advocacy in areas of importance to societal well-being such as immigration policy.

This grant will support a project to develop new plastic surfaces incorporating molecules that can be activated with low-energy visible light to eradicate bacteria and kill viruses continuously. If successful, this project will change how plastic surfaces are currently decontaminated.

We recommended a grant to support the identification of children in India from under-resourced areas who excel in math, science, and technology, and enable them to obtain high quality online education by digitally connecting them with mentors and teachers.

We recommended a grant to support the creation of a talent search organization which will help identify top young students around the world through a free to use website consisting of both challenging math and physics olympiad-style problems and discussion forums. Efforts will be particularly focused across India and China. These students will later be connected to support and programs so they can go on to work on the world's most pressing issues.

We recommended a grant to support the development of statewide ballot initiatives to institute approval voting. Approval voting is a simple voting method reform that lets voters select all the candidates they wish.

Longview Philanthropy and the Future Fund recommended a grant to support prizes for outstanding writing which encourages a broader public conversation around effective altruism and longtermism.

We recommended a grant to support Pathos Labs to produce a PopShift convening connecting experts on the future of technology and existential risks with television writers to inspire new ideas for their shows.