Project Summary:

The Sentient Futures Residency hosts researchers and builders working at the intersection of AI safety and nonhuman welfare. A current resident-led focus is creating mid-training data that helps AI models reason well about animal welfare, with clear explanations designed to generalize. This award supports the Residency program that makes this work possible.

What are this project's goals and how can they be achieved?

Run the Residency and enable resident-led projects, including contributing mid-training datasets to AI labs.

How will this funding be used?

General support for the Sentient Futures Residency: program operations, resident support, and project infrastructure.

Who is on the team, and what's their track record on similar projects?

Constance Li - Leads Sentient Futures

Allen Lu - Created the MANTA benchmark

Aidan Kanknyoku - Animal welfare alignment team at Anima

Sentient Futures Residents

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)

This turns out not to be that useful; it's quite speculative. It could also just get trained out in RL.

What other funding is this person or project getting?

It's part of Sentient Futures, but they don't have enough money.

Main points in favor of this grant

The project seems good and promising, and I don't know of any other grantmaker who would make this.

Donor's main reservations

I think this is unlikely to have very large effects on models, at least at this scale.

Process for deciding the amount

I think it could use more than this. My main uncertainty is how much funding the Falcon Fund will get.

Conflicts of interest

Please disclose e.g. any romantic, professional, financial, housemate, or familial relationships you have with the grant recipient(s).
N/A