Institute for AI Policy and Strategy

I have a lot of respect for Peter Wildeford, and they’ve clearly put in good work and have solid connections down, including on the Republican side where better coverage is badly needed, and the only other solid lead we have is FAI. Peter has also increasingly been doing strong work directly via Substack and Twitter that has been helpful to me and that I can observe directly. They are strong on hardware governance and chips in particular (as is FAI).

Given their goals and approach, funding from outside the traditional ecosystem sources would be extra helpful, ideally such efforts are fully distinct from OpenPhil.

With the shifting landscape and what I’ve observed, I’m moving them up to high confidence and priority.

Donate here, or contact them at jmarron@iaps.ai.

Institute for AI Policy and Strategy does policy research, focused on US AI regulations, compute governance, lab governance, and international governance with China.

I’m more optimistic about advocacy than policy research, so this org is not one of my top candidates. That said, I like it better than most AI policy research orgs. Some observations from briefly reading some of its research:

• The proposals are non-vacuous and moderately concrete. For example, from its recommendations to the UK government: “Investing £50m in ‘pull mechanisms’ (pay-outs contingent on achieving specific technological goals, such as prizes, AMCs, and milestone payments).” I don’t know how much that helps with x-risk, but it’s concrete.
• Almost all of its work focuses on sub-extinction risks. Some of this looks potentially useful for x-risk, for example establishing reporting requirements, or recognizing the risks associated with exporting GPUs.
• One report fairly criticizes some shortcomings of Anthropic’s Responsible Scaling Policy.

Institute for AI Policy and Strategy has received just under $4 million from Open Philanthropy (1, 2), and is seeking additional funding.