The Open Philanthropy Project recommended a grant of $525,000 to Ought for general support. Ought is a new organization with a mission to “leverage machine learning to help people think.” Ought plans to conduct research on deliberation and amplification, a concept Open Philanthropy considers relevant to AI alignment. Open Philanthropy's funding, combined with another grant from Open Philanthropy technical advisor Paul Christiano, is intended to allow Ought to hire up to three new staff members and provide one to three years of support for Ought’s work, depending how quickly they hire.
This grant falls within Open Philanthropy's work on potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence.