I have multiple project proposals that could use funding. Is there a way to submit another application, besides making another account?
As of right now, there isn't
But let me check later today to see if it's easy to expand it, so people can submit multiple proposals from one account
@robirahman this feature is now live - you can submit multiple applications from the same account, just go back to https://app.grantmaking.ai/apply/launch and it will say "Start another application"
You can only have one saved draft at a time though. So you have to submit application 2 before you start application 3
There's a field where applicants can paste previous applications as text, but can you add a way to upload attachments?
Sounds promising. Are you interested in resilience to AI catastrophes or only prevention?
Doesn't resilience imply reduction of x-risk?
I define x-risk as "risk of extinction and permanent drastic curtailment of humanity's potential"
Can't from the top of my head imagine a way to become more resilient to a catastrophe while not simultaneously reducing the x-risk.
Resilience as in reducing x-risk by improving our chances of surviving a catastrophe, as opposed to reducing x-risk by decreasing the chances of catastrophes occurring.
very interesting initiative, Matt and the team.
Is there / are there plans to include a method to request conditional funding pledges instead of outright funding as a grantee? For example, my current situation is that I'm working on AI Safety projects as a volunteer while holding a full-time job. I find the lack of pressure to produce something good or get a job immediately has given me a lot more epistemic freedom. That being said, I would love to transition to doing this full time once I gain enough experience, but only if I had the knowledge that I would get enough funding to do so.
So $5000 doesn't really do much for me; I wouldn't know what to spend it on and I'd rather a funder spend their money elsewhere. But if enough funders pledged to donate enough for me to quit my job (conditional on me actually doing so), I would.
Generalizing: some grantees might need to reach a certain threshold of money before their funding actually does anything, so a good coordination mechanism for funders would be pledges that are conditional on enough other funders pledging and that threshold being crossed.
Thanks for commenting!
In my mind, you should just ask for the min funding it would take for you to quit your job. So if you have a research path or project idea, and you need $30k for 6 months to quit your job and make it happen, make that your application and funding ask.
Because if you set your min funding to $30k you will either not get funded or you get the $30k and can quit your job.
Does that make sense? Or did you have something else in mind?
What you describes sounds to me like the regular grant request in the future, where the minimum amount is not $5k, but some larger amount that would let you quit your job .
I encourage you to apply when you feel ready!
There isn't an explicit coordination mechanism at the moment, but my impression is that if you had a good application: there would be someone willing to fund the whole amount. Currently there seems to be access of funding, and not enough great applicants
grantmaking.ai is launching a $1M grant round, distributing $5k to $50k per successful application to people and projects working to reduce x-risk from AI.
Applications will be reviewed by Gavin Leech, Ryan Kidd, and Marcus Abramovitch. We aim to make all funding decisions by July 28th. Applications submitted by July 13th are guaranteed a priority review. You can still apply after July 13th, and we will make our best effort to review late submissions as long as funding remains.
Grant applications will be mostly public, though we allow certain sensitive details to be kept private. Even if you are not applying, we invite you to join the platform to review and comment. We have set aside $100k of the budget to be given to top commenters as regranting budgets, so please share your thoughts and help us pick out awesome projects!
grantmaking.ai was initialized by Anton Makiievskyi, who is funding this round and brought the team together, built by Matt Brooks (lead dev) and Melissa Samworth (ui/ux), and advised by Austin Chen with Manifund handling grant distribution.
You can read our initial pre-launch post to learn more about what we’re building and why.
In short, we want to build the most comprehensive public repository of donation opportunities in existential AI safety space with essential information like up-to-date funding needs, theory of impact, references, endorsements, team track record, and more on top.
Donors will be able to coordinate with each other discussing best opportunities and sharing what they found, and applicants can surface their request in front of many donors simultaneously
We launch this round to gather an initial set of funding opportunities, invite donors, grantmakers and the broad community to participate by sharing their endorsements, commenting and adding useful information to the database.
As more capital and individual funders enter the space, we aim to provide the public coordination infrastructure to help funding flow faster and better. Currently, most AI safety funding is distributed privately by a few large funds - which are great and remain the most effective way to support AI safety; Nevertheless we believe a more public, agile approach will benefit the ecosystem, and be particularly useful for smaller AI safety grants that are getting the least attention from existing funders.
It’s an open platform to find, evaluate, and fund AI x-risk work.
We serve both sides of the ecosystem:
On the platform, you can:
Who should apply: Projects aimed at reducing existential risks and risks of permanent drastic curtailment of humanity’s potential. We’ll consider applications for career changes or exploratory work, on the basis of work done previously
Who is reviewing:
Commitments from applicants: We request updating your project page if you receive funding from other sources while the round lasts. If you receive a grant from this round you commit to provide brief, public quarterly updates for the duration of your project.
Priority deadline: Apply before July 13 for priority review.
Review period: Decisions will be made on a rolling basis through July 28.
No legal entity required: Individual applicants are welcome; grants distributed via Manifund.
This looks like a genuinely useful experiment. I’m especially curious whether making the process public leads to better decisions, rather than just more transparent ones.
One thing I’d watch for is reviewers anchoring on the first few comments or on recognizable names. It might be interesting to collect people’s initial views privately, then compare them with how they update after reading the discussion.
You’d end up learning quite a lot about when public deliberation actually improves grantmaking, and when it just creates herding.
Thanks, Ethan! I agree. We even thought about making the private reviews / scores hidden from each other, but decided not to this round. Maybe in the future!