Fast grants for AI x animals

The Falcon Fund, led by Manifund regrantor Marcus Abramovitch, has $500k to give away. (This includes the funds on the Manifund page as well as another $250k committed.) It makes rapid (1-week timescale), early-stage grants in animal welfare, particularly the intersection of animals and transformative AI.

The Falcon Fund has already given away $140k across 5 grants; check them out to see the proposals that are currently being funded! The largest grants are:

• $60k to start the AI-Animal Observatory, which will gather intelligence about the use of AI systems in commercial farming
• $50k for the American Food & Farm Alliance, a new organization doing political advocacy for farm animals
• $20k for the Sentient Futures Residency to create midtraining data to help AIs reason about animal welfare

We’re looking for more proposals—primarily in the $25k-$150k range, but smaller proposals are welcome too! You can submit a proposal here.

Why AI x animals?

Many people take seriously both the welfare of animals, and the possibility of short AI timelines. But most projects currently consider these in isolation. AI safety grants mostly ignore potential outcomes for non-human beings. And animal welfare grants assume business-as-usual, that our world in 10 years mostly looks like the world today.

We don’t expect this to be the case. One major goal of the fund will be to identify and create opportunities so that transformative AI secures good outcomes for animals. Some example projects we’d like to fund:

• Animal harm benchmarks. There are only a handful of animal harm benchmarks, none of which have been adopted by frontier labs. Other benchmarks that are well known and used (SWE bench, FrontierMath) came about through rising to the top of a marketplace of benchmarks. The same should happen with animal welfare benchmarks. Many benchmarks should be created, some by established ML engineers with the goal that one or two get traction to “hill-climb” on.
• Animal Welfare Constitutions: Recently, Claude’s constitution was published with a value of “Welfare of animals and of all sentient beings” when determining how to respond to a prompt. This is one line of an 84 page document from one frontier lab. There should be ready made versions of texts of various lengths for constitutions, system cards, etc. to improve model behaviours and considerations for animals.
• Watchdog organization: As AI begins to take effect across industries, there is a good chance the factory farming industry and others will start to use AI in ways beyond Precision Livestock Farming that will be important to get out ahead of. Keeping an eye on industry practices as well as effects on wild animals will be important to identify high-leverage, urgent interventions
• Animal welfare salience in AI labs: Assuming AI systems are going to have profound effects on the world, it is important for those shaping the technology to be aware of and care about issues related to animal welfare as they are developing a technology with potentially large lock-in effects

(We also expect to place some bets on non-AI animal welfare opportunities that are unusually strong.)

Why apply to the Falcon Fund?

Rapid funding

One of the top complaints among grantees is the glacial pace of funding decisions. To a founder deciding to leave their job or making their first hire, a quick response can be make-or-break. We aim to turn around decisions and get funding to recipients on the 1-week timescale.

Transparency

Applications and comments are public on Manifund. This lets you see other applications and rationales to understand the thinking behind fund decisions. It also gives other Manifund donors a chance to see your proposal and donate.

Marcus as a grantmaker

Marcus is very responsive and gives constructive feedback to applicants. As one grantee, Wang Wei, noted on the Falcon Fund page:

Marcus has been an unusually good funder for our organization … If he thinks something in a proposal is weak, and you ask, he’ll simply tell you without the guesswork. He’s also unusually responsive to such questions, believing that emails about grants deserve a 24-hour turnaround time from both parties.

Most organizations are left trying to guess why they were rejected with silence, vague feedback, or social vibes that may not have anything to do with the actual quality of the work. Marcus instead treats proposals as things that can be improved if you are willing to go back to the drawing board, consider what is ultimately most effective, and put in the work to communicate clearly and concretely.

Animal track record. Marcus has been an early backer of many projects that are now considered standout animal welfare charities, including:

• Shrimp Welfare Project — electrical stunner placements now spare ~3.3 billion shrimp/year
• Society for the Protection of Insects — state-level bans on insect factory farming
• Compassion Aligned Machine Learning — animal-welfare evals for frontier AI

AI safety regranting record. This highlights Marcus’s eye for talent and understanding of frontier AI development. From a $100k Manifund regranting budget in 2023, Marcus funded:

• Marius Hobbhahn, then starting Apollo Research
• Jesse Hoogland, then starting Timaeus
• Joseph Bloom, who went on to lead Whitebox Interp at UK AISI
• Lisa Thiergart, who went on to lead MIRI’s technical governance team

Marcus also invested in and now works at Mechanize, where he continues to earn to give; he is one of two initial major donors to the Falcon Fund.

Get involved

To submit a proposal: Simply create a project on Manifund at this link. Applications are rolling with no deadline.

To donate: You can donate directly on the Manifund page. You can also reach out to Marcus at [email protected] (or book a call here) if you’d like to discuss.