About CASIR

CASIR is a donor-advised fund that gets money to the organizations and projects that say plainly — to the public, policymakers, and elites — that superintelligent AI could cause human extinction, screening out both vague "AI risk" framing and insider-networking dressed up as advocacy.

Most philanthropic money earmarked for "AI risk" never reaches the organizations doing direct, honest work on existential risk from artificial superintelligence (ASI). It gets diverted to adjacent causes — bias, deepfakes, job loss — or ends up funding conferences and networks that never speak plainly in public. CASIR (Clarity on ASI Risk) is a donor-advised fund built to fix that. It grants only to orgs and projects that are unambiguous about ASI extinction risk, that engage directly and legibly with the public, policymakers, and elites, and that conduct themselves professionally. CASIR Members, for whom this is the core mission (e.g. PauseAI, ControlAI), receive general operating support; CASIR Partners, for whom it's a serious but non-central activity (e.g. CAIS), receive project funding capped at 25% of disbursed funds. The goal is to raise the field's sanity waterline, not to build a movement or a leadership class.

  1. The problem. Two failure modes dominate ASI-risk philanthropy today. First, dilution: money labeled "AI risk" flows to bias, deepfakes, misinformation, or labor-displacement work — real issues, but not existential ones, and not what the donor thought they were funding. Second, capture: money that does stay on-topic often ends up paying for conference circuits, retreats, and networking among a small set of insiders, rather than direct, legible communication with the public or with power. Funders have no fast way to tell these apart.
  2. The fix. CASIR applies three tests — Clarity, Straightforwardness, Professionalism — and a hard funding rule, so a donor can look at a grant and know in seconds what it's for.
  3. The mechanism. CASIR Members (ASI/x-risk is their stated core mission) get general operating support. CASIR Partners (serious, regular work on the topic, but not core to their mission) get project-only funding, capped at 25% of funds disbursed. Classification is decided against a public, checklist-based rubric — not a judgment call — so no organization can argue it's "spiritually a Member." Donors cannot earmark gifts to a specific recipient, which removes the incentive to fund a person's network rather than the work.
  4. The goal. CASIR is not trying to build an institution, a movement, or a leadership class. It's trying to raise the number of people — in the public, in legislatures, among elites — who understand plainly what the ASI risk actually is. Everything in the charter is designed to keep the money pointed at that, and nothing else.