# Orthogonal: A new agent foundations alignment organization


We are putting together Orthogonal, a non-profit alignment research organization focused on **agent foundations**, based in Europe.

We are pursuing the [formal alignment](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4XcADCLDDguyej2N7/orthogonal-s-formal-goal-alignment-theory-of-change) flavor of agent foundations in order to solve alignment in a manner which would scale to superintelligence in order to robustly overcome AI risk. If we can afford to, we also intend to hire agent foundations researchers which, while not directly aimed at such an agenda, produce output which is likely to be instrumental to it, such as finding useful ["true names"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FWvzwCDRgcjb9sigb/why-agent-foundations-an-overly-abstract-explanation).

Within this framework, our foremost agenda for the moment is [QACI](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MR5wJpE27ymE7M7iv/formalizing-the-qaci-alignment-formal-goal), and we expect to make significant progress on ambitious alignment within short timelines (months to years) and produce a bunch of [dignity](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9Q8bRmwCgXRYAgcJ/miri-announces-new-death-with-dignity-strategy) in the face of high existential risk.

Our goal is to be the kind of *object-level* research which [cyborgism](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bxt7uCiHam4QXrQAA/cyborgism) would want to accelerate. And when other AI organizations attempt to "buy time" by restraining their AI systems, we intend to be the research that this time is being bought for.

We intend to exercise significant caution with regards to AI capability [exfohazards](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yET7wbjjJZtpz6NF3/don-t-use-infohazard-for-collectively-destructive-info): [Conjecture's policy document](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Gs29k3beHiqWFZqnn/conjecture-internal-infohazard-policy) offers a sensible precedent for handling matters of internal sharing, and unlisted posts are a reasonable default for publishing our content to the outside. Furthermore, we would like to communicate about research and strategy with [MIRI](https://intelligence.org/), whose model of AI risk we largely share and who we percieve to have the most experience with non-independent agent foundations research.

Including myself — Tamsin Leake, founder of Orthogonal and LTFF-funded AI alignment researcher — we have several promising researchers intending to work fulltime, and several more who are considering that option. I expect that we will find more researchers excited to join our efforts in solving ambitious alignment.

If you are interested in such a position, we encourage you to get acquainted with our [research agenda](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4XcADCLDDguyej2N7/orthogonal-s-formal-goal-alignment-theory-of-change) — provided we get adequate funding, we hope to run a fellowship where people who have demonstrated interest in this research can work alongside us in order to test their fit as a fellow researcher at Orthogonal.

We might also be interested in people who could help us with engineering, management, and operations. And, in order to make all of that happen, we are looking for funding. For these matters or any other inquiries, you can get in touch with us at [contact@orxl.org](https://carado.moe/mailto:contact@orxl.org).