Grants (Discontinued)
BERI and BSF distributed a combined total of ~$5.9MM as part of our grants programs. In addition to this amount, BERI and BSF granted $2.5MM and $733k (respectively) to the Survival and Flourishing Fund for further regranting.
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BERI is no longer accepting applications for grants, and we do not have plans to administer new grants in the future.
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BERI ran a competitive round of grants for individuals in November 2018. We are currently administering those grants, some of which had grant terms spanning multiple years. We do not have plans to administer individual grants again in the future.
Grants disbursed:
Date | Grantee | Category | Disbursing Entity | Amount | Purpose |
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9/13/2017 | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | Organization | BERI | $100,000 | Unrestricted |
10/27/2017 | Future of Life Institute | Organization | BERI | $100,000 | Unrestricted |
10/27/2017 | Future of Life Institute | Organization | BERI | $50,000 | Unrestricted |
12/15/2017 | Institute for Philosophical Research | Organization | BERI | $25,000 | Unrestricted |
12/18/2017 | Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence | Organization | BERI | $20,000 | Restricted - "for the support of the 2018 conference on AI, Ethics, and Society" |
12/27/2017 | Center for Applied Rationality | Organization | BERI | $100,000 | Unrestricted |
12/28/2017 | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | Organization | BERI | $100,000 | Unrestricted |
1/2/2018 | Miles Brundage | Individual | BERI | $32,500 | Academic Research Award |
1/24/2018 | Global Catastrophic Risks Institute (via Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs) | Organization | BERI | $25,000 | Unrestricted |
1/26/2018 | Center for Applied Rationality | Organization | BERI | $800,000 | Unrestricted |
2/8/2018 | LessWrong 2.0 (via the Center for Applied Rationality) | Organization | BERI | $100,000 | Restricted - "for the support of activities to develop and improve the website LessWrong 2.0" |
3/30/2018 | Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence | Organization | BERI | $5,000 | Restricted - "for the support of the 2018 AAAI Spring Symposium on AI and Society: Ethics, Safety and Trustworthiness in Intelligent Agents." |
4/6/2018 | Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (via Cambridge in America) | Organization | BERI | $200,000 | Unrestricted |
4/10/2018 | Future of Life Institute | Organization | BERI | $300,000 | Unrestricted |
7/12/2018 | Theiss | Organization | BERI | $50,000 | Restricted - "support research intended to reduce existential risk" |
7/24/2018 | UC Berkeley Foundation | Organization | BERI | $400,000 | Unrestricted |
7/24/2018 | Center for Applied Rationality | Organization | BERI | $300,000 | Unrestricted |
9/4/2018 | LessWrong 2.0 (via the Center for Applied Rationality) | Organization | BERI | $150,000 | Restricted - "for the support of activities to develop and improve the website LessWrong 2.0" |
9/7/2018 | Institute for Philosophical Research | Organization | BERI | $50,000 | Unrestricted |
9/24/2018 | Luca Rade | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $20,400 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Luca will research the implications of coarse-graining by an agent in a complex environment for AI alignment. |
9/24/2018 | Jamison Bryce Hidysmith | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $20,500 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Bryce will analyze global risks from technology through a geopolitical lens. |
9/24/2018 | Jordan Alexander | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $1,900 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Jordan will host several meetings at Stanford EA and the Stanford Transhumanist Association. |
9/26/2018 | David Manheim | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $25,000 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. David will research aspects of Goodhart’s law, focusing on multi-agent dynamics. |
10/2/2018 | Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (via Cambridge in America) | Organization | BERI | $10,000 | Unrestricted |
10/2/2018 | Baeo Maltinsky | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $55,000 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Baeo will further his research on AI and technology trends. |
10/2/2018 | Roxanne Heston | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $49,532 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Roxanne will work on a variety of AI policy projects in Washington, D.C. |
10/2/2018 | Colleen McKenzie | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $51,000 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. The grant will support Colleen's research on AI timelines and the processes that produce technical and scientific progress. |
10/2/2018 | Zoe Cremer | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $25,200 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. The grant will support Zoe as a visiting fellow at CFI, where she will research disagreements about the amount and kind of structure required for AGI |
10/9/2018 | Stephanie Zolayvar | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $100,000 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Stephanie will train herself in circling and host circles for people who are promising contributors to reducing x-risk. |
10/10/2018 | Jessica Taylor | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $10,000 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Jessica will work on her research in AI alignment and other areas. |
10/10/2018 | Ben Goldhaber | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $150,000 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. The grant will support his project (co-lead by Jacob Lagerros) to bring x-risk-relevant questions to popular prediction platforms. |
10/15/2018 | Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence | Organization | BERI | $20,000 | Restricted - "for the support of the 2019 Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society conference." |
10/18/2018 | Markus Stoor (via EA Sweden) | Organization (facilitating a PG1 project) | BERI | $4,000 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Effective Altruism Sweden will support Markus Stoor’s project to coordinate two follow-up lunch-to-lunch meetings in Sweden for x-risk-focused individuals. |
10/23/2018 | Sarah D Spikes | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $24,000 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Sarah will implement improvements in support of the Rationality and Effective Altruism Community Hub (REACH). |
10/24/2018 | Justin Shovelain | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $100,000 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Justin will lead and develop “Convergence Analysis”, a new group focused on x-risk strategy research. |
10/31/2018 | (Aiken) Sebastian Farquhar | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $12,000 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Sebastian will attend conferences and purchase compute for experiments related to his PhD research on uncertainty modeling in neural networks. |
12/27/2018 | Lucius Caviola | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $44,353 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Lucius will conduct research on the psychology of existential risk. |
1/22/2019 | Leverage Research | Organization | BERI | $25,000 | Unrestricted |
1/24/2019 | Stefan Schubert | Individual - PG1 | BERI | $86,580 | Restricted to Project Grant activities. Stefan will conduct research on the psychology of existential risk. |
2/26/2019 | MIRI | Organization | BSF | $600,000 | Unrestricted |
3/12/2019 | ALLFED | Organization | BSF | $25,000 | Unrestricted |
4/8/2019 | Yarin Gal (via Americans for Oxford) | Organization | BSF | $25,000 | Unrestricted |
4/9/2019 | Leverage Research | Organization | BSF | $50,000 | Unrestricted |
4/22/2019 | 80,000 Hours (via CEA U.S.) | Organization | BSF | $350,000 | Restricted to 80,000 Hours |
4/22/2019 | Future of Life Institute | Organization | BSF | $50,000 | Unrestricted |
6/10/2019 | Global Catastrophic Risks Institute (via Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs) | Organization | BERI | $85,000 | Unrestricted |
8/18/2019 | Center for Applied Rationality | Organization | BERI | $300,000 | General Support |
1/1/2020 | Survival and Flourishing | Organization | BERI | $10,000 | General Support of Survival and Flourishing (SAF) |
3/2/2020 | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | Organization | BERI | $300,000 | Unrestricted |
8/7/2020 | Survival and Flourishing | Organization | BERI | $375,000 | General Support of Survival and Flourishing (SAF) |
Note that for some grants, payments were sent (or will be sent) in multiple disbursements (and some disbursements depend on meeting pre-specified benchmarks), thus the individual or organization may not have received the entire amount listed on the date listed.