The Info Web

#EffectiveAltruism

66 entries

People (31)

  • Ajeya Cotra Berkeley-trained effective altruist who joined Open Philanthropy in 2016, led its technical AI-risk grantmaking, sat on the board of its grantee Redwood Research, and later joined METR's technical staff.
  • Alexander Berger Stanford-trained GiveWell researcher who cofounded Open Philanthropy, became its co-CEO in 2021 and sole CEO in 2023, and holds the same titles at its 501(c)(4) Action Fund.
  • Amanda Askell Amanda Askell is the philosopher who leads the team shaping the character of Anthropic's Claude and is the principal author of its Constitution, an NYU-trained ethicist from the effective-altruism movement who was formerly married to its cofounder William MacAskill.
  • Brian Chau Canadian olympiad mathematician who founded the anti-regulation AI think tank Alliance for the Future, left it in 2025, then founded Effort, a publication investigating Coefficient Giving's funding of journalists and policy staff.
  • Buck Shlegeris AI-alignment researcher and recruiter at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute who became chief technology officer and then chief executive of Redwood Research, an Open Philanthropy-funded Berkeley nonprofit, and an Alignment Research Center director.
  • Cari Tuna Former Wall Street Journal reporter, wife of Dustin Moskovitz, president of Good Ventures and chair of Coefficient Giving, formerly Open Philanthropy, and a director or major donor in its web of linked entities.
  • Caroline Ellison Jane Street trader turned Alameda Research chief executive who pleaded guilty in December 2022, testified against Sam Bankman-Fried, forfeited Anthropic shares and was released from federal custody in January 2026.
  • Daniela Amodei Daniela Amodei is the cofounder and president of Anthropic, who ran operations and people functions at Stripe and OpenAI before starting the company with her brother Dario, and who is married to Open Philanthropy cofounder Holden Karnofsky.
  • Dario Amodei Dario Amodei is the cofounder and chief executive of Anthropic, a physicist and computational neuroscientist who led GPT-2 and GPT-3 as OpenAI's vice president of research before leaving in 2020 with a group of colleagues to build a rival AI lab.
  • Dustin Moskovitz Facebook and Asana cofounder whose Good Ventures foundation funds Open Philanthropy, the chief backer of AI-safety policy, research and journalism; an early Anthropic investor and a leading Democratic donor.
  • Elie Hassenfeld Former Bridgewater analyst who cofounded GiveWell with Holden Karnofsky in 2007, has run it since, sat on Open Philanthropy's early leadership team and was a director of its Action Fund.
  • Émile P. Torres Philosopher and historian of existential-risk thought who wrote a 2017 introduction to existential risks, then attacked longtermism in 2021 and coined the acronym TESCREAL, developed with Timnit Gebru.
  • Helen Toner Open Philanthropy analyst who became director of strategy at the Open Philanthropy-funded Georgetown CSET and, as an OpenAI director, voted in November 2023 to remove Sam Altman.
  • Holden Karnofsky Cofounder of GiveWell and Open Philanthropy and its co-CEO until 2023, a Redwood Research director, an OpenAI director from 2017 to 2021, Anthropic staff from 2025, and husband of Anthropic president Daniela Amodei.
  • Jaan Tallinn Jaan Tallinn is the Estonian programmer who helped build Kazaa and Skype and turned the resulting fortune into the largest private funding stream for AI-safety and existential-risk work, cofounding the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and the Future of Life Institute and backing Anthropic and DeepMind.
  • Jason Matheny IARPA director who founded Georgetown's Open Philanthropy-funded CSET, ran technology policy at Biden's National Security Council, became RAND's chief executive in 2022 and was an original Anthropic trustee.
  • Julian Savulescu Julian Savulescu is an Oxford bioethicist who founded the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, edited the Journal of Medical Ethics, and advanced 'procreative beneficence' and the case for human genetic and moral enhancement.
  • Leopold Aschenbrenner German-born former FTX Future Fund staffer and OpenAI Superalignment researcher, fired in 2024, who founded Situational Awareness LP, an AI-infrastructure hedge fund that CNBC reported was forced to sell its public holdings in 2026.
  • Luke Muehlhauser Open Philanthropy's head of AI governance grantmaking, investigator on its grants launching CSET and funding RAND at Jason Matheny's discretion, and an Anthropic director until May 2024.
  • Marc Gunther Former Fortune senior writer who covers foundations, effective altruism and psychedelics, and whose 2018 Stanford Social Innovation Review article mapped the entities around Cari Tuna and Open Philanthropy.
  • Naina Bajekal Former Time international editor and executive editor who joined Open Philanthropy, now Coefficient Giving, in July 2024 and leads its communications team.
  • Nate Thomas Stanford-affiliated machine-learning researcher who cofounded Redwood Research in 2021 as chief executive, later chaired its board, and led the affiliated Constellation Institute in Berkeley.
  • Nick Beckstead American philosopher, Open Philanthropy program officer and Effective Ventures director who ran the FTX Foundation and Future Fund, was sued and then dismissed by the FTX debtors, and co-founded Secure AI Project.
  • Nick Bostrom Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher who cofounded the transhumanist movement, founded Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, wrote the AI-existential-risk book Superintelligence, is called the father of longtermism, and in 2023 admitted to a 1990s email asserting that black people are less intelligent than white people.
  • Peter Singer Peter Singer is an Australian utilitarian philosopher at Princeton whose 1972 essay 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality' and its drowning-child argument became the founding text of effective altruism, and who wrote Animal Liberation in 1975.
  • Rob Reich Stanford political scientist who sat on the GiveWell board from 2013, wrote in 2015 that effective altruists are technocrats, and was senior advisor to the U.S. AI Safety Institute in 2024 and 2025.
  • Sam Bankman-Fried Sam Bankman-Fried is the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and the effective-altruism movement's largest benefactor, who directed FTX customer funds into longtermist causes and a 500 million dollar Anthropic investment before FTX collapsed in 2022 and he was convicted of fraud in 2023.
  • Tasha McCauley Robotics and geospatial entrepreneur, RAND adjunct and UK board member of Effective Ventures, who as an OpenAI director voted in November 2023 to remove Sam Altman and then left the board.
  • Toby Ord Toby Ord is an Australian moral philosopher at Oxford who cofounded Giving What We Can and the effective altruism movement, was a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, and wrote The Precipice, which argues there is a one-in-six chance humanity suffers an existential catastrophe this century.
  • Will Henshall Science and technology reporter placed at Time through the Tarbell Fellowship in 2023 and 2024 who joined Coefficient Giving, formerly Open Philanthropy, as a program officer for AI governance in July 2024.
  • William MacAskill William MacAskill is a Scottish moral philosopher at Oxford who cofounded effective altruism through Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, and the Centre for Effective Altruism, wrote the longtermist book What We Owe the Future, recruited Sam Bankman-Fried into earning-to-give, and resigned from the FTX Future Fund when the exchange collapsed in 2022.

Organizations (31)

  • 80,000 Hours Career-advice organization founded in Oxford in 2011 by Benjamin Todd and William MacAskill, hosted by the Centre for Effective Altruism's charity until 2025 and funded with at least 39.4 million dollars by Open Philanthropy.
  • Alameda Research Sam Bankman-Fried's trading firm, which drew FTX customer deposits through an undisclosed line of credit and put about 500 million dollars into Anthropic, a stake later sold chiefly to a UAE-aligned group.
  • Alignment Research Center AI-alignment nonprofit run by Paul Christiano, funded in 2022 by Open Philanthropy and the FTX Foundation, which incubated the evaluations team that became METR.
  • Americans for Responsible Innovation Washington 501(c)(4) AI-policy lobby founded in late 2023 by former congressman Brad Carson and Eric Gastfriend, funded by Coefficient Giving and Omidyar Network, whose PAC is financed by AI-safety researchers.
  • Anthropic AI company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers from the effective-altruism milieu, funded early by Tallinn, Moskovitz and Bankman-Fried, deployed on classified networks, then blacklisted by the Pentagon in 2026.
  • Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative The Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative is the nonprofit founded in 2017 by Andrew Critch that provides free operational support and grants to university research groups working on existential risk, funded chiefly by Jaan Tallinn and Open Philanthropy.
  • Bridgewater Associates Westport, Connecticut hedge fund founded in 1975, registered with the SEC since 1990, whose record includes James Comey as general counsel, Connecticut subsidies, a Chinese fund license, and a Brunei sovereign fund shareholder.
  • Center for AI Policy Washington AI-safety advocacy nonprofit that registered its first lobbyist in December 2023, promoted a draft Responsible AI Act, and drew about a third of its donations from Jaan Tallinn's Lightspeed Grants.
  • Center for AI Safety San Francisco AI-safety nonprofit directed by Dan Hendrycks, funded by Open Philanthropy, which organized the 2023 extinction-risk statement; its 501(c)(4) arm co-sponsored SB 1047 and lobbied for the AI Safety Institute.
  • Center for Applied Rationality The Center for Applied Rationality is a Berkeley nonprofit spun off from the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in 2012 to teach rationality techniques through residential workshops, which served as a recruitment funnel for AI-safety work and whose 2019 alumni reunion was protested by the group that became the Zizians.
  • Centre for Effective Altruism Oxford charity company incorporated in 2012 under MacAskill, Ord and Beckstead, with a US twin that Bankman-Fried served as treasurer and director, renamed Effective Ventures in 2022 and investigated after FTX's collapse.
  • Effective Ventures Effective Ventures was the umbrella charity that legally housed the central effective-altruism organizations, took roughly 27 million dollars from Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX in 2022, repaid all of it to the FTX bankruptcy estate in a 2024 settlement, and then resolved to spin out all of its projects into independent bodies.
  • FTX Cryptocurrency exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried in 2019 whose customer deposits, commingled with Alameda Research, funded political gifts and effective-altruism grants before its collapse in November 2022.
  • FTX Future Fund The FTX Future Fund was the philanthropic vehicle launched in February 2022 by Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX Foundation, run by Nick Beckstead with Will MacAskill and others, which committed roughly $160 million to longtermist, AI-safety, and biosecurity causes before its entire team resigned and the money was clawed back when FTX collapsed in November 2022.
  • Future of Humanity Institute The Future of Humanity Institute was a research center at the University of Oxford founded in 2005 by Nick Bostrom that became the academic headquarters of longtermism and AI-existential-risk research, drew funding from Elon Musk and the FTX Future Fund, and was closed by the university in April 2024.
  • Future of Life Institute The Future of Life Institute is a nonprofit founded in 2014 by Max Tegmark and others to address existential risks from advanced technology, funded with an early ten million dollar gift from Elon Musk, that published the 2023 open letter calling for a pause on giant AI experiments.
  • GiveWell GiveWell is a charity evaluator founded in 2007 by former Bridgewater Associates analysts Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, whose cost-effectiveness rankings of global-health charities and whose GiveWell Labs project, funded by Good Ventures, became Open Philanthropy.
  • Giving What We Can Pledge society launched at Oxford in November 2009 by Toby Ord and William MacAskill, later housed under Effective Ventures, which repaid 26.8 million dollars of FTX money in 2024.
  • Good Ventures Private foundation of Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, founded in 2011 within a web of LLCs and donor-advised funds, which built GiveWell Labs into Open Philanthropy and held about 10 billion dollars in 2025.
  • Horizon Institute for Public Service Nonprofit founded in 2022 that pays technology fellows placed in congressional offices, federal agencies and think tanks; Politico reported Open Philanthropy had effectively created it.
  • Institute for Progress Washington think tank founded in 2021 by Alec Stapp and Caleb Watney with Open Philanthropy money, working on metascience, high-skilled immigration, biotechnology, infrastructure and emerging technology policy.
  • Leverage Research Leverage Research is a Bay Area organization run from 2011 to 2019 by the philosopher Geoff Anders that recruited from the rationalist and effective-altruism milieu to pursue a 'one true theory of psychology' through intensive group experimentation, and that former members later described as a coercive, cult-like environment.
  • Long-Term Benefit Trust Body of financially disinterested trustees empowered to elect a growing share of Anthropic's board, founded in 2023 with trustees from RAND, Effective Ventures and the AI-safety world; a board majority from 2026.
  • METR AI model evaluation nonprofit led by Beth Barnes, spun off in December 2023 from Paul Christiano's Alignment Research Center, and partner with RAND in the Canary project funded through the Audacious Project.
  • Open Philanthropy Grantmaker of Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, renamed Coefficient Giving in 2025, which has given away about 7 billion dollars and funded CSET, RAND's AI work, Horizon fellows and Tarbell journalists.
  • OpenAI OpenAI is an artificial-intelligence company founded as a nonprofit in 2015 with a billion-dollar pledge from backers including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, and Peter Thiel, whose 2023 firing and reinstatement of CEO Sam Altman exposed the conflict between its effective-altruism-aligned safety board and its commercial expansion.
  • Public First Action 501(c)(4) given 40 million dollars by Anthropic in 2026, linked to the Public First super PAC funded by Anthropic staff, which passes money to committees backing Alex Bores and other candidates.
  • Redwood Research Berkeley AI-alignment nonprofit founded in 2021, with Open Philanthropy co-CEO Holden Karnofsky on its board until 2023, to which Open Philanthropy gave 62.52 million dollars from 2021 to 2025.
  • Survival and Flourishing Fund The Survival and Flourishing Fund is the grant-allocation vehicle backed chiefly by Jaan Tallinn that uses a software-assisted method called the S-process to direct money to existential-risk, AI-safety, and longtermist organizations, having organized roughly 150 million dollars in gifts since 2019.
  • Tarbell Center for AI Journalism Nonprofit launched in 2022 that pays early-career journalists placed in newsrooms to cover AI and publishes the newsletter Transformer; most of its funding comes from Coefficient Giving, formerly Open Philanthropy.
  • U.S. AI Safety Institute Federal AI-evaluation body created inside NIST in November 2023, renamed the Center for AI Standards and Innovation in June 2025, with Paul Christiano as its first head of AI safety.

Concepts (4)

  • Effective Altruism Effective Altruism is a movement that emerged around 2011 from Oxford philosophy and the LessWrong rationalist community, advancing evidence-based giving and a 'longtermist' concern with the far future and artificial-intelligence risk, whose 2013 summit Peter Thiel keynoted and whose largest funder, Sam Bankman-Fried, collapsed in the 2022 FTX fraud.
  • Rationalist Community The Rationalist Community is the Bay Area subculture that formed around Eliezer Yudkowsky's LessWrong writings and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in the late 2000s, organized around probability-based reasoning and artificial-intelligence existential risk, and from whose social network the Effective Altruism movement and the Leverage Research, Vassarite, and Zizian cult formations all emerged.
  • TESCREAL TESCREAL is an acronym coined by Émile Torres and Timnit Gebru for a bundle of seven overlapping ideologies, transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, and longtermism, that they argue share roots in twentieth-century eugenics and together drive the race to build artificial general intelligence.
  • Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is the moral theory, running from Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill through Henry Sidgwick to Peter Singer, that the right act maximizes aggregate welfare, and its quantifying logic became the operating premise of effective altruism and longtermism.