CharitiesCentre for the Governance of AI (GovAI)
Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI)
Charity

Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI)

AI Governance Field Building

GovAI aims to enhance the management and influence of global policy decisions regarding advanced AI by developing a global research community and engaging with key stakeholders to navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by AI advancements.

Reducing global catastrophic risks

What problem is the Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI) working on?

AI has the potential to be a radically transformative technology. Continued progress could bring profoundly important benefits, including major scientific advances and reductions in illness and poverty. However, this progress could also bring substantial risks. Research is urgently needed to understand the implications of advanced AI.

GovAI believes that positive outcomes may require the development of new global norms, policies, and institutions. GovAI aims to define and map the field of AI governance and address the most important and neglected research questions.

What does GovAI do?

GovAI conducts research that is guided by its research agenda and theory of impact, and draws on political science, computer science, economics, law, and philosophy. Its research has been published in leading journals and has been used to advise decision-makers in government, private industry, and civil society.

In addition, GovAI:

Examples its recent successes include:

  • A paper written by GovAI's founder and president, Allan Dafoe, led to the creation of the Cooperative AI Foundation, which aims to "support research that will improve the cooperative intelligence of advanced AI systems for the benefit of all of humanity" and has already received $15 million USD in funding.
  • GovAI's alumni have gone into policy roles in the US government, the European Union, top AI Labs (such as DeepMind and OpenAI) and think tanks such as the Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
  • Many grantmakers and charity evaluators interested in funding work that could improve the long-term future have supported GovAI. This includes grants from Open Philanthropy, the Survival and Flourishing Fund, and others listed in GovAI's annual report.

What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of GovAI?1.

We don't currently have further information about the cost-effectiveness of the GovAI beyond it doing work in a high-impact cause area and taking a reasonably promising approach.

Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).

At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.

We have varying degrees of information about the cost-effectiveness of our supported programs. We have more information about programs that impact-focused evaluators (some of which our research team expects to investigate soon as part of their evaluator investigations) have looked into, as well as programs that we’ve previously included on our list of recommended charities. We think it’s important to share the information we have with donors as we expect it will be useful in their donation decisions, but don’t want donors to mistakenly overweight the extent to which we share information about some charities and not others. Therefore, we want to clarify two things:

  • When we include information about an organisation’s cost-effectiveness, this may not be the only evidence that exists. It is simply the evidence the GWWC research team has at this time.
  • When we don’t include information about an organisation’s cost-effectiveness, this does not necessarily mean there is no such information. However, it does mean the GWWC research team isn’t privy to any more information at this time.