CASIR is not incorporated yet. The period of August to October is dedicated to collecting expressions of interest from organizations and funders. We will consider this trial period a success if we collect expressions of interest from 10 organizations, as well as 5 funders willing to commit +1M$. Conditioned on success, we will move forward with the structure described below.
Structure01CASIR will operate two organizations: a tax-deductible 501(c)(3) Donor Advised Fund, as well as a 501(c)(4) for lobbying purposes. Two committees will sit on these organizations. We hope to build a balance between staying faithful to the precise vision of funding activities that are directly and clearly about reducing the extinction risk from AI, and avoiding self-reinforcing groupthink or extreme filter bubbles.
The Grant Committee will be the main committee. As such, it will be responsible for most of the funding decisions, and will initially be assembled to reflect the views expressed in ControlAI's Direct Institutional Plan. Its role will be to approve grants, to classify associated organizations as Members or Partners, and to manage the affairs of CASIR in general. The Grant Committee will be set up to reflect the CASIR ecosystem and its values, and to uphold and make decisions according to the CASIR Charter.
The Ecosystem Committee will be the secondary committee. Most notably, it will hold veto power over the funding decisions of the Grant Committee, and will be assembled to reflect the views of the wider ecosystem. To make sure the CASIR Charter is upheld and applied consistently, the Grant Committee will not be representative of the wider ecosystem by design. However, this also means the Grant Committee will be more susceptible to blind spots, and more likely to miss some information needed for good decision-making. The role of the Ecosystem Committee will be to provide viewpoints and information that the Grant Committee may lack, preventing it from descending into groupthink and making bad decisions due to lack of information. In the same spirit, members of the Ecosystem Committee will have a small discretionary pot to expedite small funding decisions that shouldn't be gated by a full review from the Grant Committee.
02CASIR will follow standard transparency norms. Most notably, grant criteria, the classification rubric, the charter, and the composition of the committees will be published in full. In general, public documentation will match the rules used internally. In particular, the charter is how we will maintain the integrity of CASIR's mission.
Annual public reports will list all grants made, alongside their amounts, and the classification of each recipient as a CASIR Member or CASIR Partner.