Also known as: MIRI, Singularity Institute, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, SIAI
| Date | Event | Type | Description | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence founded | Founding | Founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky with the original (paradoxical) mission of accelerating AI development. | en.wikipedia.org (opens in new tab) |
| 2005 | Reorientation toward AI safety | Pivot | Yudkowsky's concerns about superintelligent AI risks prompted a fundamental reorientation toward AI safety. Organization also relocated from Atlanta to Silicon Valley that year. | |
| 2006 | First Singularity Summit | Launch | Annual summit organized in cooperation with Stanford University, with funding from Peter Thiel. | |
| Dec 2012 | Sold name, web domain, and Singularity Summit to Singularity University | Pivot | Marked the end of the public-outreach phase. | |
| Jan 2013 | Renamed to Machine Intelligence Research Institute | Pivot | — | |
| Feb 2019 | Open Philanthropy two-year general support grant ($2.65M) | Funding | Provided $2,652,500 over two years; OP support grew from $1.4M (2018) to $2.31M (2019). | openphilanthropy.org (opens in new tab) |
| Apr 2020 | Largest single Open Philanthropy grant — $7.7M | Funding | $6.24M from main OP funders + $1.46M from BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo. At this peak, OP provided ~60% of MIRI's predicted budgets for 2020-2021. | openphilanthropy.org (opens in new tab) |
| May 2021 | $4.3M Ethereum donation from Vitalik Buterin | Funding | Contributed to a revenue spike to $25.6M in 2021. | intelligence.org (opens in new tab) |
| 2024 | Strategic pivot away from alignment research | Pivot | 2024 announcement; current focus on attempting to halt development of increasingly general AI models via discussions with policymakers about extreme risks. | intelligence.org (opens in new tab) |