Description of subprojects and results, including major changes from the original proposal

Spending breakdown

See details here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KWpyRXzHn6JMyZiBn/ai-for-animals-2025-bay-area-retrospective

@RyanKidd Thanks for raising this concern. I have now fixed the wording for better clarity.

@Seth-Momanyi thanks! I'm quite familiar with PauseAI. I just think it's not accurate to say that this proposal is for the first AI safety hub in Africa. Perhaps "the first AI safety hub in Kenya" would be more accurate?

@RyanKidd Thanks for reaching out, Ryan. Our current overall costs per month are ~50K. Any contribution made will help us cover the costs of producing our current four podcast shows on The AI Risk Network (https://www.youtube.com/@TheAIRiskNetwork), making AI extinction risk a reality for those outside the circles of AI safety research, academia, media or government. Funding will help towards salaries and advertising costs. Thank you. We hope you have a wonderful day.

What progress have you made since your last update?

Here's what we've been up to since March, until now (September 15):

* Several events, including a mini-conference in April with 6 speakers on genomics and reproduction.

* Our main event: Reproductive Frontiers Summit 2025. In June, over 100 attendees--scientists, entrepreneurs, parents, and enthusiasts--gathered, learned, and planned.

* We started publishing talks from our summit, with more coming: https://www.youtube.com/@BerkeleyGenomicsProject

* Several articles (https://berkeleygenomics.org/Explore), including a statement of a vision for a future with reprogenetics (https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation.html) and a high-level visual roadmap for reprogenetics (https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Visual_roadmap_to_strong_human_germline_engineering.html)

* Some behind-the-scenes support for the reprogenetics field.

* Research on chromosome selection.

* BGP in the news: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/silicon-valley-high-iq-children-764234f8

What are your next steps?

Upcoming:

* Talks and other videos

* White paper(s) on chromosome selection (https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Methods_for_strong_human_germline_engineering.html#method-chromosome-selection)

* Articles

Follow for updates:

https://x.com/BerkeleyGenomic

https://www.youtube.com/@BerkeleyGenomicsProject

https://bsky.app/profile/berkeleygenomics.bsky.social

We are a hub focused on Strengthening Advocacy for Regulatory Frameworks in Kenya. Donations support lobbying efforts which influence global discussions on AGI, advocating for government intervention to regulate advanced AI systems leading to AGI

@RyanKidd PauseAI https://pauseai.info/ is a pioneering organization in highlighting urgent warnings from AI experts—like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio—about existential risks from advanced AI, and it is the first to aggressively advocate for global government intervention, including an indefinite pause on frontier AI development beyond systems leading to AGI, through protests, open letters signed by hundreds of scientists, and pushes for international treaties similar to those for nuclear non-proliferation.

Isn't the Equiano Institute the "first AI safety hub in Africa"?

Is there any more information?

What does marginal funding buy, given the ~$200k from other sources?

Hi @Jason, we would love for the CIARL course: icare-animals.org/ciarl-course (or on-demand: icare-animals.org/ciarl-ondemand ) to be CLE-eligible! Do you have any advice or knowledge on the process?

Hi @Brad-West, if you're interested in the course, you're welcome to register for the live CIARL course: icare-animals.org/ciarl-course or for the on-demand course, if you're looking for a more flexible format: icare-animals.org/ciarl-ondemand
We look forward to having you join the programme! Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions: courses@icare-animals.org

I asked Sean to put up this proposal and have fully funded his request.

The case for this grant is extremely straightforward: my sense (from ~1.5 years at METR) is that of all the independent external people building directly on top of METR work, Sean is the person whose work my colleagues have been most excited about. Sean appears to be smart, agentic, and focused. My sense is that he's working ~1.5 days per week on these projects basically due to funding constraints, which seems crazy; I'm very excited to support him increasing this to 4.

I could say some more specific things (excited for Sean's connections to pen testers, excited for him to contribute to sabotage monitoring projects, excited for his past work measuring time horizons in offensive cybersecurity , etc.) but mainly my decision comes down to my colleagues' rare degree of excitement for whatever Sean has in store next. I'm thrilled to bet on that.

Akhil’s lens is both wide and precise — a rare combination. He doesn’t just describe the crisis; he orients us within it. With intellectual humility and narrative skill, he builds bridges where others draw lines.

Thanks @username and whoever directed the donation! (For a second I thought you were trying to pressure me into buying the book haha (which I did months ago).)

donation matching cost of a book (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jAFw2QLkFhLSDgiXp/nowl-s-shortform?commentId=Q2RXyMcekEhw7Qg9o)

Excited to see Akhil leaning into his writing full-time! I discovered his blogs earlier this year and really appreciate how they are action-oriented, down-to-earth, and incredibly relatable - without any sugar coating of the challenges and complexities that our society faces. Storytelling is such an important part of movement building and systems change, and I'd love to see his work reaching a larger audience. I have no doubt that he'll continue to inspire many people to take action through his writing!

@madar Once we have experimental results we'll outline them here, possibly even before posting them. I don't know if one can subscribe to the comments on a manifund project.

@madar Hi! Good questions.

We're not posting updates anywhere as of yet. We don't need any more donations. This comment is the last update. I also add subjective impressions here as the experiment goes on.

I'm not sure how important regular updates are, since by now it's a very steady rhythm of taking the Orexin-A weekly, but little interesting things until we have results with a decent sample size. We did neglect writing an update here because I was otherwise occupied, that explains the large gap since the last comment.

The current state of the project is that we've all received the Orexin-A and are collecting data (I took a dose of {placebo, orexin} this morning but am still struggling with the five hours of sleep). We'll probably collect data at least until end of October, likely into November, and then I'll post the next update.

I’m incredibly proud of Akhil for launching this project. I’ve seen firsthand how deeply he cares about creating a more hopeful world, from his work in climate tech to his current focus on the metacrisis. He has poured years of thought and effort into this, and I wholeheartedly support him. I encourage others to check out his work and see the impact he’s striving to make.

Description of subprojects and results, including major changes from the original proposal

Spending breakdown

See details here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KWpyRXzHn6JMyZiBn/ai-for-animals-2025-bay-area-retrospective

@RyanKidd Thanks for raising this concern. I have now fixed the wording for better clarity.

@Seth-Momanyi thanks! I'm quite familiar with PauseAI. I just think it's not accurate to say that this proposal is for the first AI safety hub in Africa. Perhaps "the first AI safety hub in Kenya" would be more accurate?

@RyanKidd Thanks for reaching out, Ryan. Our current overall costs per month are ~50K. Any contribution made will help us cover the costs of producing our current four podcast shows on The AI Risk Network (https://www.youtube.com/@TheAIRiskNetwork), making AI extinction risk a reality for those outside the circles of AI safety research, academia, media or government. Funding will help towards salaries and advertising costs. Thank you. We hope you have a wonderful day.

What progress have you made since your last update?

Here's what we've been up to since March, until now (September 15):

* Several events, including a mini-conference in April with 6 speakers on genomics and reproduction.

* Our main event: Reproductive Frontiers Summit 2025. In June, over 100 attendees--scientists, entrepreneurs, parents, and enthusiasts--gathered, learned, and planned.

* We started publishing talks from our summit, with more coming: https://www.youtube.com/@BerkeleyGenomicsProject

* Several articles (https://berkeleygenomics.org/Explore), including a statement of a vision for a future with reprogenetics (https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation.html) and a high-level visual roadmap for reprogenetics (https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Visual_roadmap_to_strong_human_germline_engineering.html)

* Some behind-the-scenes support for the reprogenetics field.

* Research on chromosome selection.

* BGP in the news: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/silicon-valley-high-iq-children-764234f8

What are your next steps?

Upcoming:

* Talks and other videos

* White paper(s) on chromosome selection (https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Methods_for_strong_human_germline_engineering.html#method-chromosome-selection)

* Articles

Follow for updates:

https://x.com/BerkeleyGenomic

https://www.youtube.com/@BerkeleyGenomicsProject

https://bsky.app/profile/berkeleygenomics.bsky.social

We are a hub focused on Strengthening Advocacy for Regulatory Frameworks in Kenya. Donations support lobbying efforts which influence global discussions on AGI, advocating for government intervention to regulate advanced AI systems leading to AGI

@RyanKidd PauseAI https://pauseai.info/ is a pioneering organization in highlighting urgent warnings from AI experts—like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio—about existential risks from advanced AI, and it is the first to aggressively advocate for global government intervention, including an indefinite pause on frontier AI development beyond systems leading to AGI, through protests, open letters signed by hundreds of scientists, and pushes for international treaties similar to those for nuclear non-proliferation.

Isn't the Equiano Institute the "first AI safety hub in Africa"?

Is there any more information?

What does marginal funding buy, given the ~$200k from other sources?

Hi @Jason, we would love for the CIARL course: icare-animals.org/ciarl-course (or on-demand: icare-animals.org/ciarl-ondemand ) to be CLE-eligible! Do you have any advice or knowledge on the process?

Hi @Brad-West, if you're interested in the course, you're welcome to register for the live CIARL course: icare-animals.org/ciarl-course or for the on-demand course, if you're looking for a more flexible format: icare-animals.org/ciarl-ondemand
We look forward to having you join the programme! Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions: courses@icare-animals.org

I asked Sean to put up this proposal and have fully funded his request.

The case for this grant is extremely straightforward: my sense (from ~1.5 years at METR) is that of all the independent external people building directly on top of METR work, Sean is the person whose work my colleagues have been most excited about. Sean appears to be smart, agentic, and focused. My sense is that he's working ~1.5 days per week on these projects basically due to funding constraints, which seems crazy; I'm very excited to support him increasing this to 4.

I could say some more specific things (excited for Sean's connections to pen testers, excited for him to contribute to sabotage monitoring projects, excited for his past work measuring time horizons in offensive cybersecurity , etc.) but mainly my decision comes down to my colleagues' rare degree of excitement for whatever Sean has in store next. I'm thrilled to bet on that.

Akhil’s lens is both wide and precise — a rare combination. He doesn’t just describe the crisis; he orients us within it. With intellectual humility and narrative skill, he builds bridges where others draw lines.

Thanks @username and whoever directed the donation! (For a second I thought you were trying to pressure me into buying the book haha (which I did months ago).)

donation matching cost of a book (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jAFw2QLkFhLSDgiXp/nowl-s-shortform?commentId=Q2RXyMcekEhw7Qg9o)

Excited to see Akhil leaning into his writing full-time! I discovered his blogs earlier this year and really appreciate how they are action-oriented, down-to-earth, and incredibly relatable - without any sugar coating of the challenges and complexities that our society faces. Storytelling is such an important part of movement building and systems change, and I'd love to see his work reaching a larger audience. I have no doubt that he'll continue to inspire many people to take action through his writing!

@madar Once we have experimental results we'll outline them here, possibly even before posting them. I don't know if one can subscribe to the comments on a manifund project.

@madar Hi! Good questions.

We're not posting updates anywhere as of yet. We don't need any more donations. This comment is the last update. I also add subjective impressions here as the experiment goes on.

I'm not sure how important regular updates are, since by now it's a very steady rhythm of taking the Orexin-A weekly, but little interesting things until we have results with a decent sample size. We did neglect writing an update here because I was otherwise occupied, that explains the large gap since the last comment.

The current state of the project is that we've all received the Orexin-A and are collecting data (I took a dose of {placebo, orexin} this morning but am still struggling with the five hours of sleep). We'll probably collect data at least until end of October, likely into November, and then I'll post the next update.

I’m incredibly proud of Akhil for launching this project. I’ve seen firsthand how deeply he cares about creating a more hopeful world, from his work in climate tech to his current focus on the metacrisis. He has poured years of thought and effort into this, and I wholeheartedly support him. I encourage others to check out his work and see the impact he’s striving to make.