Encode

They started out doing quite a lot on a shoestring budget by using volunteers, helping with SB 1047 and in several other places. Now they are turning pro, and would like to not be on a shoestring. I think they have clearly earned that right. The caveat is risk of ideological capture. Youth organizations tend to turn to left wing causes.

The risk here is that this effectively turns mostly to AI ethics concerns. It’s great that they’re coming at this without having gone through the standard existential risk ecosystem, but that also heightens the ideological risk.

I continue to believe it is worth the risk.

To donate, go here. They can be contacted at sneha@encodeai.org.

Encode does political advocacy on AI x-risk. They also have local chapters that do something (I’m not clear on what).

They have a good track record of political action:

• Encode co-sponsored SB 1047 and the new SB 53.
• Encode filed in support of Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI’s for-profit conversion, which was the largest theft in human history.

Encode is relatively transparent and relatively focused on the big problems, although not to the same extent as ControlAI.