In 2023, many of the world's leading AI experts warned about the extinction risk from AI. Since then, only a few organizations have consistently informed policy makers and citizens alike about these risks, their causes, and the policy solutions to address them. In particular, 501(c)(4) organizations, which are not subject to lobbying restrictions in the US, are very rare.
01Organizations that want to do work on reducing the extinction risk from ASI by informing policy makers and citizens struggle to find funding to maintain or expand their activities. They are often outcompeted by organizations who downplay the extinction risk, often choosing to be more vocal about mainstream concerns around AI, such as deepfakes, bias, and its impact on the labor market. As in the proverbial stag hunt, the defecting organizations abandon the shared goal of public clarity on the risks in favor of appearing more respectable at the expense of everyone else.
02Funders are under the illusion that their money goes to organizations openly working on extinction risk from ASI, or that said organizations are already well-funded. 5-10 years ago, many Effective Altruist organizations sought funding by assuring funders that they both care about extinction risks, and about talking to policy makers. This created an expectation in funders (and very often in the C-suite of these organizations themselves) that the staff who interact with politicians would inform them about the extinction risks from AI.
However, these past three years, it has become obvious to organizations like ControlAI, PauseAI US and MIRI that this never happened. Instead, when they interacted with US policy makers, very few had already heard about ASI or extinction risks.
Although many organizations set out with noble intentions, they did not commit to being clear on extinction risks. As a result, they let themselves fall prey to incentives, playing respectability games that involved downplaying these risks or outright not mentioning them. Said organizations ended up at best avoiding the topic of extinction risks entirely, or at worst partnering and supporting the AI companies that are the main source of said risk.
CASIR's mission is to bring Clarity on the extinction risk of ASI. To do so, CASIR will create an alternative funding vehicle, to grant funders clear and justified expectations that their money will straightforwardly be used to reduce the extinction risk from ASI.
Its goal is to create and foster an ecosystem of organizations who commit to clear communication on the matter, engaging with both the public and the elites in a straightforward and transparent manner.