Conjecture Ltd
www.conjecture.dev · organization
Technical AI safety researchAI safety fieldbuilding
- Received
- $519,530
- from 2 funders
- Grants
- 3
- Funders
- 2
- Years active
- 2022–25
Grants over time
Coefficient GivingLong-Term Future Fund
Biggest funders
| Coefficient Giving | $446,703 | 86% | 2 |
| Long-Term Future Fund | $72,827 | 14% | 1 |
Reviews
Caleb Parikh · Long-Term Future Fund · full post · Aug 2, 2023
$72,827 · Funding for a 2-day workshop to connect alignment researchers from the US, UK, and AI researchers and entrepreneurs from Japan.
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- Conjecture applied for funding to host a two day AI safety workshop in Japan in collaboration with Araya (a Japanese AI company). They planned to invite around 40 people, with half of the attendees being AI researchers, and half being alignments researchers from the US and UK. Japanese researchers were generally senior, leading labs, holding postdoc positions in academia, or holding senior technical positions at tech companies.
- To my knowledge, there has been very little AI safety outreach conducted amongst strong academic communities in Asia (e.g. in Japan, Singapore, South Korea …). On the current margin, I am excited about more outreach being done in these countries within ultra-high talent groups. The theory of change for the grant seemed fairly straightforward: encourage talented researchers who are currently working in some area of AI to work on AI safety, and foster collaborations between them and the existing alignment community.
- Conjecture shared the invite list with me ahead of the event, and I felt good about the set of alignment researchers invited from the UK and US. I looked into the Japanese researchers briefly, but I found it harder to gauge the quality of invites given my lack of familiarity with the Japanese AI scene. I also trust Conjecture to execute operationally competently on events of this type, having assisted other AI safety organisations (such as SERI MATS) in the past.
- On the other hand, I have had some concerns about Conjecture, and I felt confused about whether this conference gave Conjecture more influence in ways that I would feel concerned about given the questionable integrity and judgement of their CEO, - see this and this section of a critique of their organisation (though note that I don’t necessarily endorse the rest of the post). It was also unclear to me how counterfactual the grant was, and how this traded off against activities that I would be less excited to see Conjecture run. I think this is a general issue with funding projects at organisations with flexible funding, as organisations are incentivised to present their most fundable projects (which they are also the most excited about), and then in cases where the funding request is successful, move funding that they would have spent on this projects to other lower impact projects. Overall, I modelled making this grant as being about a quarter as cost-effective as it might have been without these considerations (though I don’t claim this discount factor to be particularly reliable).
- Overall, I thought this grant was pretty interesting, and I think that the ex-ante case for it was pretty solid. I haven’t reviewed the outcomes of this grant yet, but I look forward to reviewing and potentially making more grants in this area.
- Update: Conjecture kindly directed me towards this retrospective and have informed me that some Japanese attendees of their conference are thinking of creating an alignment org.
Grants received
| Date ↓ | Funder | Via | Amount | Cause | Source | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 2025 | Coefficient Giving | $223,134 | Technical AI safety research | coefficient_giving | Cybersecurity Bootcamp | |
| May 2023 | Coefficient Giving | $223,569 | Technical AI safety research | coefficient_giving | AI Safety Technical Program | |
| Oct 2022 | Long-Term Future Fund | EA Funds | $72,827 | Events | ea_funds | A 2-day workshop to connect alignment researchers from the US, UK, and AI researchers and entrepreneurs from Japan |
As fiscal sponsor 2 · $702,380 · $351,190 average
| Date ↓ | Funder | Recipient | Via | Amount | Cause | Source | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 2023 | Coefficient Giving | MATS Research | $245,000 | Training pipelines | coefficient_giving | SERI MATS | |
| Oct 2022 | Coefficient Giving | MATS Research | $457,380 | AI safety fieldbuilding | coefficient_giving | SERI MATS Program in London |