At the moment I don't know much about what other funders there might be for something like this, sorry. I might know more in several months, though this type of thing is out of my wheelhouse.
It's pretty far outside my wheelhouse. I'm focused on technological interventions.
The plan sounds like it needs more funding than SFF is likely to give for a project like this, without very strong results. (To be clear: I don't speak for SFF and am not employed by them; I participate as a speculation grantor.) You can see recent funding recommendations from SFF here: https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2026/recommendations
I don't know why this can't be funded by government or by other philanthropic organizations. I would encourage you to try to get funding that way.
Be advised: Due to the way that the Survival & Flourishing Fund does speculation grants, it is in some respects advantageous to your application if you apply far away from a round's deadline. E.g. right now.
thousands of very smart people put in lots of effort to apply, and the org says "Oh no, not any of you guys"
(I'll note that I'm qualified to be a grantmaker for the area of human intelligence amplification, which many leaders in AI safety view as a crucial second or third priority behind "stop AI" and "at least try to solve alignment". But it seems like a waste of my time to apply to be a grantmaker at CG without some indication that they'd be open to this. I did message a couple people hoping for a quick "nah" or "worth applying" but didn't hear back.)
As a first draft, roughly, I think the speculation is worthwhile IF AND ONLY IF it's in a context where it will then be followed up by maker/breaker investigation, on the question of "whether / how this can actually lead to SHIA in the real world". This includes going back and forth between skeptically searching for flaws, and optimistically searching for workarounds/alternatives/reasons for hope. It also includes thinking about the whole process of getting to the working tech, including
would this even increase intelligence meaningfully, and how would we know
getting researchers and funding for the research at various stages
having intermediate feedback on success
questions about how society will receive it--researchers, regulation, funding, and deployment are all related to this, so if you're so dismissive of these questions that you don't consider them at all, there's a significant chance you're just barking up the wrong tree in terms of actually getting this done
You're talking about revascularization? It's interesting, but would need a lot of fleshing out.
To step back a bit, I appreciate you thinking about these things and proposing ideas, but in order to make something actually work, I think there has to be a lot more in depth exploration. In particular, there'd have to be iterative maker/breaker investigation of the idea. In other words, I think you should argue against your own idea, then improve the idea and counterargue in favor, then critique the new version again, and repeat. Then for some ideas, you might actually convince yourself that the idea isn't that workable or promising; for other ideas, you might be able to make a more convincing case and/or put together a promising version of the project.
At the moment I don't know much about what other funders there might be for something like this, sorry. I might know more in several months, though this type of thing is out of my wheelhouse.
Thanks. It seems like a good project, but:
Be advised: Due to the way that the Survival & Flourishing Fund does speculation grants, it is in some respects advantageous to your application if you apply far away from a round's deadline. E.g. right now.
https://survivalandflourishing.fund
I was a Recommender in a past Theme Round & I'm currently a speculation grantor. Some projects I'd be interested in making speculation grants to (though note that I'm not currently scheduled to be a Recommender in any round): https://lesswrong.com/posts/MBxSbzYECJEoeTkwZ/sff-s-hsee-grant-round-human-intelligence-amplification
In particular, I'm interested in reprogenetics: https://reprogeneticsinstitute.org/articles/Projects_that_might_help_accelerate_strong_reprogenetics.html
(Feel free to reach out to me if you have a relevant project.)
(I'll note that I'm qualified to be a grantmaker for the area of human intelligence amplification, which many leaders in AI safety view as a crucial second or third priority behind "stop AI" and "at least try to solve alignment". But it seems like a waste of my time to apply to be a grantmaker at CG without some indication that they'd be open to this. I did message a couple people hoping for a quick "nah" or "worth applying" but didn't hear back.)
Cf. https://tsvibt.blogspot.com/2022/09/dangers-of-deferrence.html https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jzy5qqRuqA9iY7Jxu/the-problem-of-graceful-deference-1 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zLG2DnJw6oEZqAgaE/tools-for-deferring-gracefully
I'm talking both about politics, but also and mainly about the technical plan.
As a first draft, roughly, I think the speculation is worthwhile IF AND ONLY IF it's in a context where it will then be followed up by maker/breaker investigation, on the question of "whether / how this can actually lead to SHIA in the real world". This includes going back and forth between skeptically searching for flaws, and optimistically searching for workarounds/alternatives/reasons for hope. It also includes thinking about the whole process of getting to the working tech, including
What I mean is, what's been tried regarding using bacteria as persistent delivery mechanisms in the brain.
You're talking about revascularization? It's interesting, but would need a lot of fleshing out.
To step back a bit, I appreciate you thinking about these things and proposing ideas, but in order to make something actually work, I think there has to be a lot more in depth exploration. In particular, there'd have to be iterative maker/breaker investigation of the idea. In other words, I think you should argue against your own idea, then improve the idea and counterargue in favor, then critique the new version again, and repeat. Then for some ideas, you might actually convince yourself that the idea isn't that workable or promising; for other ideas, you might be able to make a more convincing case and/or put together a promising version of the project.
It's not the higher intelligence that's bad, it's the forced breeding or other dangerous experiments on much smarter animals.
Like what?