Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative

The Bay Area X-risk Community Initiative (BAXCI) was shut down in October 2022 when the remaining $70k was granted to the Center for Applied Rationality in support of Lightcone Infrastructure. BAXCI had been dormant for nearly three years prior to this decision and had no plans to return to active operations. We decided that the funding would be best forwarded to another organization with a similar mission to BAXCI and that Lightcone Infrastructure was the best candidate for this.

Anna Salamon was the volunteer project manager of BAXCI. Anna described the initiative as “useful stuff Eliezer Yudkowsky and/or Anna Salamon want to do to help with existential risk.” BAXCI operated under an initial budget of approximately $100k, and focused mostly on small actions that they hoped would be helpful to the Bay Area rationality and AI safety communities centered around CFAR and MIRI.

Contributors (Former)

Anna Salamon

BAXCI Manager

Anna managed BAXCI on a volunteer basis, deciding on its priorities.

Ben Sancetta

X-risk Assessment Advisor

Ben’s primary responsibility was helping people, mostly local to the Bay Area, to form and introspect on their own perspectives on existential risk, primarily using a technique developed by CFAR called "internal double crux".