Future of Life Institute donations made (filtered to cause areas matching AI safety)

This is an online portal with information on donations that were announced publicly (or have been shared with permission) that were of interest to Vipul Naik. The git repository with the code for this portal, as well as all the underlying data, is available on GitHub. All payment amounts are in current United States dollars (USD). The repository of donations is being seeded with an initial collation by Issa Rice as well as continued contributions from him (see his commits and the contract work page listing all financially compensated contributions to the site) but all responsibility for errors and inaccuracies belongs to Vipul Naik. Current data is preliminary and has not been completely vetted and normalized; if sharing a link to this site or any page on this site, please include the caveat that the data is preliminary (if you want to share without including caveats, please check with Vipul Naik). We expect to have completed the first round of development by the end of July 2024. See the about page for more details. Also of interest: pageview data on analytics.vipulnaik.com, tutorial in README, request for feedback to EA Forum.

Table of contents

Basic donor information

We do not have any donor information for the donor Future of Life Institute in our system.

This entity is also a donee.

Donor donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 49 162,000 209,548 20,000 50,000 88,050 100,000 121,642 162,000 200,000 200,000 250,000 276,000 1,500,000
AI safety 49 162,000 209,548 20,000 50,000 88,050 100,000 121,642 162,000 200,000 200,000 250,000 276,000 1,500,000

Donation amounts by cause area and year

If you hover over a cell for a given cause area and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.

Note: Cause area classification used here may not match that used by donor for all cases.

Cause area Number of donations Number of donees Total 2023 2018 2015
AI safety (filter this donor) 49 34 10,267,866.00 1,563,000.00 2,000,036.00 6,704,830.00
Total 49 34 10,267,866.00 1,563,000.00 2,000,036.00 6,704,830.00

Graph of spending by cause area and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by cause area and year (cumulative)

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Donation amounts by subcause area and year

If you hover over a cell for a given subcause area and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.

For the meaning of “classified” and “unclassified”, see the page clarifying this.

Subcause area Number of donations Number of donees Total 2023 2018 2015
AI safety 47 33 8,704,866.00 0.00 2,000,036.00 6,704,830.00
AI safety/technical research 1 1 1,401,000.00 1,401,000.00 0.00 0.00
AI safety/strategy 1 1 162,000.00 162,000.00 0.00 0.00
Classified total 49 34 10,267,866.00 1,563,000.00 2,000,036.00 6,704,830.00
Unclassified total 0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 49 34 10,267,866.00 1,563,000.00 2,000,036.00 6,704,830.00

Graph of spending by subcause area and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by subcause area and year (cumulative)

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Donation amounts by donee and year

Donee Cause area Metadata Total 2023 2018 2015
University of Oxford (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 2,077,212.00 0.00 225,000.00 1,852,212.00
Alignment Research Center (filter this donor) 1,401,000.00 1,401,000.00 0.00 0.00
Stanford University (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 1,120,341.00 0.00 350,000.00 770,341.00
Carnegie Mellon University (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 400,000.00 0.00 0.00 400,000.00
University of California, Berkeley (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 392,727.00 0.00 0.00 392,727.00
University of Cambridge (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 306,750.00 0.00 220,000.00 86,750.00
Yale University (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 276,000.00 0.00 276,000.00 0.00
Australian National University (filter this donor) 276,000.00 0.00 276,000.00 0.00
University of Padova (filter this donor) 275,000.00 0.00 0.00 275,000.00
Machine Intelligence Research Institute (filter this donor) AI safety FB Tw WP Site CN GS TW 250,000.00 0.00 0.00 250,000.00
Teesside University (filter this donor) 224,747.00 0.00 224,747.00 0.00
AI Impacts (filter this donor) AI safety Site 211,310.00 162,000.00 0.00 49,310.00
Duke University (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 200,000.00 0.00 0.00 200,000.00
Oregon State University (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 200,000.00 0.00 0.00 200,000.00
Harvard University (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 200,000.00 0.00 0.00 200,000.00
University of Washington (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 200,000.00 0.00 0.00 200,000.00
University of Michigan (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 200,000.00 0.00 0.00 200,000.00
University of Texas (filter this donor) 200,000.00 0.00 200,000.00 0.00
IDSIA (filter this donor) 196,650.00 0.00 0.00 196,650.00
Yale (filter this donor) 180,000.00 0.00 0.00 180,000.00
MIT (filter this donor) 150,000.00 0.00 150,000.00 0.00
University of Denver (filter this donor) 136,918.00 0.00 0.00 136,918.00
University of Illinois at Chicago (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 134,247.00 0.00 0.00 134,247.00
Georgia Institute of Technology (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 121,642.00 0.00 0.00 121,642.00
Theiss Research (filter this donor) 119,750.00 0.00 0.00 119,750.00
Centre for Effective Altruism, Oxford (filter this donor) 119,670.00 0.00 0.00 119,670.00
The New School (filter this donor) 116,974.00 0.00 0.00 116,974.00
Center for Applied Rationality (filter this donor) Rationality FB Tw WP Site TW 111,757.00 0.00 0.00 111,757.00
Social & Environmental Entrepreneurs (filter this donor) 100,000.00 0.00 0.00 100,000.00
The University of Melbourne (filter this donor) 98,532.00 0.00 0.00 98,532.00
University of Colorado (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 98,400.00 0.00 0.00 98,400.00
Smith College (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 78,289.00 0.00 78,289.00 0.00
Rice University (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 69,000.00 0.00 0.00 69,000.00
Cornell University (filter this donor) FB Tw WP Site 24,950.00 0.00 0.00 24,950.00
Total -- -- 10,267,866.00 1,563,000.00 2,000,036.00 6,704,830.00

Graph of spending by donee and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by donee and year (cumulative)

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Donation amounts by influencer and year

If you hover over a cell for a given influencer and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.

For the meaning of “classified” and “unclassified”, see the page clarifying this.

Influencer Number of donations Number of donees Total 2023
Survival and Flourishing Fund|Olle Häggström|Steve Omohundro|Daniel Kokotajlo 1 1 1,401,000.00 1,401,000.00
Survival and Flourishing Fund|Nathan Labenz|Michael Page 1 1 162,000.00 162,000.00
Classified total 2 2 1,563,000.00 1,563,000.00
Unclassified total 47 33 8,704,866.00 0.00
Total 49 34 10,267,866.00 1,563,000.00

Skipping spending graph as there is at most one year’s worth of donations.

Donation amounts by disclosures and year

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Donation amounts by country and year

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Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (1 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
FLI Podcast: Existential Hope in 2020 and Beyond with the FLI Team2019-12-27Lucas Perry Future of Life InstituteFuture of Life Institute Future of Life Institute Donee periodic updateAI safety/Global catastrophic risksThis is a podcast along with transcript. FLI team members each describe what they do, how their role has evolved, and their plans for 2020

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (49 donations)

Graph of top 10 donees (for donations with known year of donation) by amount, showing the timeframe of donations

Graph of donations and their timeframes
DoneeAmount (current USD)Amount rank (out of 49)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
AI Impacts162,000.00252023-10AI safety/strategyhttps://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2023-h2-recommendationsSurvival and Flourishing Fund Nathan Labenz Michael Page Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2023 H2 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios. In each simulation, Recommenders specify a marginal value function for funding each application, and an algorithm calculates a table of grant recommendations by taking turns distributing funding recommendations from each Recommender in succession, using their marginal value functions to prioritize. The Recommenders then discuss their evaluations and update the simulation with their new opinions, using approval voting to prioritize discussion topics, until the end of the last meeting when their inputs are finalized. Similarly, funders specify and adjust different value functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts."

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's tenth grant round and the fifth with a grant to this grantee.

Other notes: A grant recommendation to the same grantee of $179,000 is also made for funder Jaan Tallinn as part of the same SFF round.
Alignment Research Center1,401,000.0022023-04AI safety/technical researchhttps://futureoflife.org/grant-program/2023-grants/Survival and Flourishing Fund Olle Häggström Steve Omohundro Daniel Kokotajlo Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2023 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2023-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios. In each simulation, Recommenders specify a marginal value function for funding each application, and an algorithm calculates a table of grant recommendations by taking turns distributing funding recommendations from each Recommender in succession, using their marginal value functions to prioritize. The Recommenders then discuss their evaluations and update the simulation with their new opinions, using approval voting to prioritize discussion topics, until the end of the last meeting when their inputs are finalized. Similarly, funders specify and adjust different value functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts."

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: https://futureoflife.org/grant-program/2023-grants/ says: "Support for the Alignment Research Center (ARC) Evaluation (Evals) Team. Evals is a new team at ARC building capability evaluations (and in the future, alignment evaluations) for advanced ML models. The goals of the project are to improve our understanding of what alignment danger is going to look like, understand how far away we are from dangerous AI, and create metrics that labs can make commitments around."

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's ninth grant round and the second with a grant to this grantee.

Other notes: In this grant round, there are two funders: Jaan Tallinn and Future of Life Institute, and the page https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2023-h1-recommendations does not provide a breakdown of the grant amount $3,247,000 by funder. https://futureoflife.org/grant-program/2023-grants/ is used to obtain the amount actually granted by FLI.
Yale University (Earmark: Allan Dafoe)276,000.0042018-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/2018-ai-grant-recipients#Dafoe-- A project grant. Project title: Allan Dafoe.
Stanford University (Earmark: Stefano Ermon)100,000.00352018-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/2018-ai-grant-recipients#Ermon-- A project grant. Project title: Stefano Ermon.
University of Oxford (Earmark: Owain Evans)225,000.00122018-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/2018-ai-grant-recipients#Evans-- A project grant. Project title: Owain Evans.
Teesside University (Earmark: The Anh Han)224,747.00132018-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/2018-ai-grant-recipients#Han-- A project grant. Project title: The Anh Han.
University of Cambridge (Earmark: Jose Hernandez-Orallo)220,000.00142018-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/2018-ai-grant-recipients#Hernandez-- A project grant. Project title: Jose Hernandez-Orallo.
Smith College (Earmark: James Miller)78,289.00412018-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/2018-ai-grant-recipients#Miller-- A project grant. Project title: James Miller.
Stanford University (Earmark: Dorsa Sadigh)250,000.0082018-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/2018-ai-grant-recipients#Sadigh-- A project grant. Project title: Dorsa Sadigh.
University of Texas (Earmark: Peter Stone)200,000.00152018-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/2018-ai-grant-recipients#Stone-- A project grant. Project title: Peter Stone.
MIT (Earmark: Josh Tenenbaum)150,000.00262018-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/2018-ai-grant-recipients#Tenenbaum-- A project grant. Project title: Josh Tenenbaum.
Australian National University (Earmark: Marcus Hutter)276,000.0042018-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/2018-ai-grant-recipients#Hutter-- A project grant. Project title: Marcus Hutter.
Carnegie Mellon University (Earmark: Manuela Veloso)200,000.00152015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Veloso-- A project grant. Project title: Manuela Veloso.
Stanford University (Earmark: Michael Webb)76,318.00422015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Webb-- A project grant. Project title: Michael Webb.
University of Washington (Earmark: Daniel Weld)200,000.00152015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Weld-- A project grant. Project title: Daniel Weld.
University of Cambridge (Earmark: Adrian Weller)50,000.00442015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Weller-- A project grant. Project title: Adrian Weller.
University of Michigan (Earmark: Michael Wellman)200,000.00152015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Wellman-- A project grant. Project title: Michael Wellman.
University of Oxford (Earmark: Michael Wooldridge)125,000.00292015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Wooldridge-- A project grant. Project title: Michael Wooldridge.
University of Illinois at Chicago (Earmark: Brian Ziebart)134,247.00282015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Ziebart-- A project grant. Project title: Brian Ziebart.
University of Oxford (Earmark: Nick Bostrom)1,500,000.0012015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Bostrom-- A center grant. Project title: Nick Bostrom.
Yale (Earmark: Wendell Wallach)180,000.00242015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Wallach-- A conference and education grant. Project title: Wendell Wallach.
Center for Applied Rationality (Earmark: Anna Salamon)111,757.00332015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Salamon-- A conference and education grant. Project title: Anna Salamon.
Rice University (Earmark: Moshe Vardi)69,000.00432015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Vardi-- A conference and education grant. Project title: Moshe Vardi.
Stanford University (Earmark: Jacob Steinhardt)88,050.00402015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Steinhardt-- A conference and education grant. Project title: Jacob Steinhardt.
IDSIA (Earmark: Bas Steunebrink)196,650.00232015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Steunebrink-- A project grant. Project title: Bas Steunebrink.
University of Cambridge (Earmark: Ramana Kumar)36,750.00472015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Kumar-- A project grant. Project title: Ramana Kumar.
The New School (Earmark: Peter Asaro)116,974.00322015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Asaro-- A project grant. Project title: Peter Asaro.
Social & Environmental Entrepreneurs (Earmark: Seth Baum)100,000.00352015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Baum-- A project grant. Project title: Seth Baum.
University of California, Berkeley (Earmark: Paul Christiano)50,000.00442015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Christiano-- A project grant. Project title: Paul Christiano.
Duke University (Earmark: Vincent Conitzer)200,000.00152015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Conitzer-- A project grant. Project title: Vincent Conitzer.
Centre for Effective Altruism, Oxford (Earmark: Owen Cotton-Barratt)119,670.00312015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Cotton-- A project grant. Project title: Owen Cotton-Barratt.
Oregon State University (Earmark: Thomas Dietterich)200,000.00152015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Dietterich-- A project grant. Project title: Thomas Dietterich.
Stanford University (Earmark: Stefano Ermon)250,000.0082015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Ermon-- A project grant. Project title: Stefano Ermon.
University of Oxford (Earmark: Owain Evans)227,212.00112015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Evans-- A project grant. Project title: Owain Evans.
Machine Intelligence Research Institute (Earmark: Benja Fallenstein)250,000.0082015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Fallenstein-- A project grant. Project title: Benja Fallenstein. It appears like this was added on the MIRI top donors website with an amount of $250,252 on 2017-02-04: see https://web.archive.org/web/20170204024838/https://intelligence.org/topdonors/ for more.
AI Impacts (Earmark: Katja Grace)49,310.00462015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Grace-- A project grant. Project title: Katja Grace.
University of Colorado (Earmark: Seth Herd)98,400.00392015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Herd-- A project grant. Project title: Seth Herd.
Stanford University (Earmark: Alex Aiken)100,813.00342015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Aiken-- A project grant. Project title: Alex Aiken.
Georgia Institute of Technology (Earmark: Fuxin Li)121,642.00302015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Li-- A project grant. Project title: Fuxin Li.
Stanford University (Earmark: Percy Liang)255,160.0072015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Liang-- A project grant. Project title: Percy Liang.
Theiss Research (Earmark: Long Ouyang)99,750.00372015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Ouyang-- A project grant. Project title: Long Ouyang.
Harvard University (Earmark: David Parkes)200,000.00152015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Parkes-- A project grant. Project title: David Parkes.
Carnegie Mellon University (Earmark: Andre Platzer)200,000.00152015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Platzer-- A project grant. Project title: Andre Platzer.
University of Denver (Earmark: Heather Roff)136,918.00272015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Roff-- A project grant. Project title: Heather Roff.
University of Padova (Earmark: Francesca Rossi)275,000.0062015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Rossi-- A project grant. Project title: Francesca Rossi.
The University of Melbourne (Earmark: Benjamin Rubinstein)98,532.00382015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Rubinstein-- A project grant. Project title: Benjamin Rubinstein.
University of California, Berkeley (Earmark: Stuart Russell)342,727.0032015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Russell-- A project grant. Project title: Stuart Russell.
Cornell University (Earmark: Bart Selman)24,950.00482015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Selman-- A project grant. Project title: Bart Selman.
Theiss Research (Earmark: Kaj Sotala)20,000.00492015-09-01AI safetyhttps://futureoflife.org/AI/2015awardees#Sotala-- A project grant. Project title: Kaj Sotala.

Similarity to other donors

Sorry, we couldn't find any similar donors.