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SFF-2024 S-Process Recommendations
websurvivalandflourishing.fund·survivalandflourishing.fund/2024/recommendations
SFF uses a collaborative 'S-Process' where independent evaluators propose grants and negotiate allocations; this page is useful for understanding which AI safety organizations received philanthropic support and funder reasoning in 2024.
Metadata
Importance: 45/100organizational reportreference
Summary
The Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF) publishes its 2024 grant recommendations resulting from the S-Process, a structured collaborative funding process where independent evaluators propose and debate grants for existential risk reduction and AI safety organizations. This page lists funded organizations, grant amounts, and evaluator reasoning for supporting work on AI alignment, biosecurity, and related cause areas.
Key Points
- •Documents SFF's 2024 S-Process grant recommendations, a structured mechanism where multiple independent evaluators negotiate funding allocations
- •Covers grants primarily targeting AI safety, alignment research, and existential risk mitigation organizations
- •Provides transparency into philanthropic decision-making in the EA/longtermist funding ecosystem
- •Reflects evaluator views on which organizations and approaches are most promising for reducing catastrophic risk
- •Serves as a snapshot of the broader AI safety funding landscape and funder priorities in 2024
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Organization | 59.0 |
5 FactBase facts citing this source
| Entity | Property | Value | As Of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Institute for AI Policy and Strategy | Grant Received | $183,000 | 2024 |
| Survival and Flourishing Fund | Revenue | $19.9 million | 2024 |
| Center for AI Policy | Grant Received | $288,000 | 2024 |
| AI Policy Institute | Grant Received | $142,000 | 2024 |
| Center for AI Safety | Grant Received | $2.8 million | 2024 |
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In the second half of this year (2024), twelve people participated as “Recommenders” in a single round of a grant-recommendation process for the Funder Jaan Tallinn. The round featured three tracks: the [Main Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2024/application#sff-2024-main-track-announcement), the [Fairness Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2024/application#sff-2024-fairness-track-announcement), and the [Freedom Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2024/application#sff-2024-freedom-track-announcement). The following Recommenders in this round agreed to have their identities made public:
- Scott Alexander (Main Track)
- Benjamin Todd (Main Track)
- Deger Turan (Main Track)
- Nell Watson (Freedom Track)
- Zvi Mowshowitz (Freedom Track)
- Irene Solaiman (Fairness Track)
### How final grant amounts were determined
#### The “S-Process”
We call the recommendation process used in this grant round the “S-Process”, for “Simulation Process”, because it involves allowing the Recommenders and Funder to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of [marginal utility functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility). Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, the Funder specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the Funder to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts.
As part of the process this round, we used Recommenders’ inputs to create a synthetic mean Recommender. This feature acts as a simulated Recommender, using an equal weighted average of all the Recommenders’ utility functions to generate grant recommendations.
We also introduced a couple of changes to the process that impacted both the direction and scope of funding. Two specialized tracks, the [Fairness Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2024/application#sff-2024-fairness-track-announcement) and the [Freedom Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2024/application#sff-2024-freedom-track-announcement), ran with three Recommenders each, in parallel with the [Main Track](https://survivalandflourishing.fund/2024/application#sff-2024-main-track-announcement) which had six Recommenders. All guaranteed eligible applications (applications who received Speculation Grant funding) were qualified to be evaluated by Recommenders in all tracks (Main, Freedom, and Fairness). As a result, in the final recommendations table there are three columns showing the recommendations of the three different tracks, as well as a column showing the Synthetic Mean Recommender’s allocation. In the “Total Funding Recommended” column is the total funding recommendation an org received, which is the sum of the recommendations from the three tracks and the Synthetic Mean Recommender.
_The S-Proces
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