# AI Safety Orgs Should Apply for Government Grants

**TLDR:** I believe that AI safety organizations, especially labs and university-affiliated researchers, should all spend a lot more time applying for government grants. I know this is painful and costly, but we can set the bar for what "good funding looks like" to governments, and that is highly valuable (as is the money). If you agree and are willing to put in a little bit of time to raise the sanity waterline of government/University grant-makers (and also possibly get funded), fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf9j18m_ViMHUM8lhS-5Y_lCmQL_G_neVheQveZjAIb1EnotA/viewform) to be considered for a closed Slack group where we're coordinating this.

*Disclaimer: I write this in a private capacity. The post was voice-to-text-to-ClaudeOpus-to-my-edits made.*

Why
===

First, money is good, and getting more money is pretty good.

Second, all joking aside: there is not enough funding in the philanthropic world for all the work that we could be doing. I've heard [@Ryan Kidd](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/ryankidd44?mention=user) make a point about wanting to grow the alignment field 10x or 100x (to keep pace with the industry) and this plan is bottlenecked on funding (among other things). Maybe in a world where [Anthropic and OpenAI employees spend a lot more on philanthropy](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rRBaP7YbXfZibSn3C/front-load-giving-because-of-anthropic-donors), that's not the case. But I still strongly believe expanding the funding pool by tapping into public funding markets is very valuable for the extra funding it brings.

Third, and this is actually my strongest argument: I expect governments to soon open a lot more funding for AI safety, and I expect them to not know what to fund. And I expect, by default, a lot of the funding to be captured by NGOs doing more harm than good, or work that's orthogonal to impact.

To explain in depth: AI safety is becoming politically salient. In the next couple of years, governments will want to look strong on AI by investing in AI safety. I expect a lot of NGOs that are currently well-connected to government funding pipelines will internally create a veneer of AI safety expertise, enough to apply for government funding and capture most of it. I expect the majority of their projects to be of the flavor "educate people on misuses of AI", "check how minorities are using AI", or "test AI for biases", doing either pointless work, work that doesn't make things safer, or work that may be harmful through safetywashing. 

If the first several government funding applications only have these low-impact applications submitted, then government decision-makers' tastes will be set by that. If later we wish to apply with impactful research, we will find it difficult and an uphill battle to actually get funded, because our projects will look weird in comparison to what they've already approved.

**Setting the flavor of government decision-making when it comes to grant-making is a huge deal.** It opens up future funding not just for the people who do the hard work of applying first, but for any future applicants who want their work gauged on sane criteria instead of bureaucratic, Goodhearted measures. This third reason is why we should be doing these applications now, before most funds are opened.

**Why aren't we doing this already?**
=====================================

Applying for government funds is extremely difficult, a lot more tiring, and a lot more bureaucratically demanding than philanthropic funding. We are absolutely spoiled by all of our funders being extremely sane in their demands of what should go on a funding form. The professors among us who have had to apply for academic or government grants know the suffering of filling out 70-page forms in a team of 12, just to be rejected without a good explanation. [One study](https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/5/e002800) of Australian researchers found they spent an average of 34 working days per proposal. [A US study](https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0118494.html) of federally-funded astronomers and psychologists found the average proposal takes 116 PI hours and 55 co-investigator hours to write. That's roughly a month of full-time work for a single application. EU Horizon Grants require there to be a diverse consortium across countries, and it takes multiple months to collect the people, write the grant (multiple forms on dozens of pages), and then sometimes it takes a year to hear back! Compared to a two-pager that sometimes suffices for EA/AIS funding and hearing back in a few months, this is much less appealing.

**What we're doing about it**
=============================

I don't have a way to make this completely painless. But what I've done is engage a friend, Joseph Ambrosio Pagaran, who has in the past (first unsuccessfully, then successfully) applied for EU Horizon funding for things outside his expertise. I asked him to help me create a consortium to apply for EU and US government grants, things like Horizon Europe and NSF programs (also any other exciting programs that open up, possibly UK AISI, Singapore, or others).

Joseph has worked in many different fields, has very broad interests, and is (since recently) interested in AI safety. He wants to help us make these application rounds work. He has experience applying for this kind of funding and I trust his expertise in this domain. He'll be the coordination lead and will do the bulk of the writing work.

I do not promise that the process will be painless. But I do promise that Joseph and I will try to take over as much of the busy work from you as possible, and only make you write a minimal amount of stuff and meet for a minimal amount of time, if you decide to join us in these applications.

But you need to bring your own alignment expertise.

**Who can apply?**
==================

Generally, most governments require you to be affiliated either with a research nonprofit (usually loosely defined as a nonprofit that has published research under its name) or with a university.

If you're neither of these but you think there's a public funding call that's extremely relevant to your work, reach out anyway. Maybe you can be added as an affiliate to an existing AIS organization.

However, the much clearer route to funding is for professors, employees of universities, or people in established safety labs with headquarters somewhere within [EU Horizon eligible countries](https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/common/guidance/list-3rd-country-participation_horizon-euratom_en.pdf) or the United States.

If that's you, and you're willing to put in a little bit of time to raise the sanity waterline of government grant-makers (and also possibly get funded), fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf9j18m_ViMHUM8lhS-5Y_lCmQL_G_neVheQveZjAIb1EnotA/viewform) to be considered for a closed Slack group where we're coordinating this. I expect to add anyone who has eligibility for NSF or Horizon EU grants, and most of the people with reasonable ideas and a pathway to a grant application. I will not be adding people who can assist with execution - we'll announce calls for those separately, this is a group for PIs, senior researchers, or similar who can do direction setting and who need help with grant applications.

**Possible failure modes**
==========================

*We end up working on non-safety projects.* The government might ask for things that aren't safety-relevant. We apply for that, get funded, and end up working on stuff that doesn't matter. In this case, it's up to the Principal Investigator to keep eyes on the prize and make sure the work stays pointed at actual safety. On our end, I will use my own judgment to check if I think projects are worth applying for, and expect others to help with this. We'll filter for things that are actually aiming at alignment, and we'll continue supervising projects to make sure that aim is maintained. We expect that if we think a project is sane, our filtering is enough that the additional government filter shouldn't change things negatively.

*Legal trouble.* Applying for funding does put some legal restrictions on what you can and cannot do. Generally, for this purpose, consortia are made, so legal obligations fall on the consortium, not on individual groups. That comes with bureaucracy, like maybe having to purchase insurance and such. But all those legal costs are just included in the budget and will be covered if they happen. We already have some entities who can help as fiscal sponsors and run that part.

*Unforeseen issues.* We'll deal with it as we go, but I am happy to answer questions and criticism in comments!

If you are interested, fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf9j18m_ViMHUM8lhS-5Y_lCmQL_G_neVheQveZjAIb1EnotA/viewform) to be considered for a closed Slack group where we're coordinating this.