TL;DR: We're opening an expression of interest for the Better Futures Fellowship pilot. This is a 9-week, part-time program for people deciding whether better-futures work— research and fieldbuilding aimed at improving how good the future is, conditional on humanity surviving — should become their focus. Five weeks of facilitated discussion grounded in research by William MacAskill and his colleagues at Forethought Institute, followed by a four-week project phase where every fellow ships a public output. Cohorts of 4–8. Submit your expression of interest here. EOIs close 10 July; the first cohorts are tentatively planned to start 10 August.
I used AI to assist in writing this post, and it’s likely that >30% is AI-generated text.
About this program
The Better Futures Fellowship pilot is a nine-week, part-time program for people deciding whether better-futures work — research and fieldbuilding aimed at improving how good the future is, conditional on humanity surviving — should become their focus. It combines a five-week facilitated discussion course anchored in research by William MacAskill and his colleagues at Forethought Institute, with a four-week guided project phase in which every fellow produces a concrete research or fieldbuilding output.
Most longtermist effort goes into making sure there is a future at all. The Better Futures series argues that this is only half the problem: if futures where we survive realise just a small fraction of what is possible, then improving the quality of surviving futures may matter as much as raising the odds of survival (by some estimates far more) and it is dramatically more neglected. The field working on this is currently a handful of researchers. The fellowship exists to grow it.
The program builds on the infrastructure of AIS Collab.
Program goals
- Fellows can reconstruct the core better-futures arguments (flourishing vs. surviving, no easy eutopia, persistent path-dependence, grand challenges, power concentration) and can identify their cruxes rather than deferring to them.
- Fellows engage critically: weekly exercises require taking positions, constructing objections, and threat-modelling.
- Every fellow ships a project: a critique, gap analysis, research extension, or fieldbuilding artifact, public by default.
- Fellows leave with a considered next step: a project to continue, a shortlist of roles or orgs, or a reasoned decision that this is not their comparative advantage, which also counts as success.
Who it is for
Primary audience: people familiar with effective-altruism principles who have engaged seriously with cause prioritisation, currently in or considering AI safety and who are open to pivoting on neglectedness grounds.
Secondary audience: people already engaged with AI safety (e.g. BlueDot graduates) without an EA background, comfortable with existential risk and transformative AI concepts. We point to EA foundations (impartiality, longtermism, value lock-in) in optional readings where needed.
Not for: people without prior EA or AI-safety familiarity. The course assumes that context from day one.
Selection emphasis: motivated and agentic 'founder-profile' people, strong generalists, and policy entrepreneurs. The field is emerging, so fellows must be comfortable working without established career tracks.
How it works
- Cohorts of 4–8 plus a trained facilitator. One 2-hour discussion per week, run from a shared Discussion Doc (separate document). Sessions are doc-driven with timed activities, so facilitation stays light, consistent, and scalable.
- Weekly preparation is about 2 hours: 50–65 minutes of core readings plus a 30–45 minute written exercise, pasted into the Discussion Doc before the session. Exercises are the raw material for discussion activities.
- Core reading is deliberately capped. Anything important that did not fit lives in optional readings; depth is opt-in.
- Weeks 6–9 are the project phase (see the Project Phase Guide): roughly 5–10 hours per week, with a weekly 60–90 minute check-in run from standard agendas.
- Cohorts share a Slack channel for questions, links, and accountability between sessions.
Course at a glance
| Wk | Theme | Core reading | Exercise | Session centerpiece |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Why flourishing, not just survival | ~53 min | Your baseline picture + strongest objection | Two Futures; the 36x stress-test |
| 2 | The intelligence explosion and grand challenges | ~63 min | Pick your grand challenge; apply the punt test | Concept teach-backs; punt-or-can't-punt sorting |
| 3 | What would a good future actually be? | ~49 min | Mistopia sketch | Mistopia clinic; designing for moral uncertainty |
| 4 | Power concentration: who ends up controlling AGI? | ~55 min | Threat-model a concentration pathway | Kill-chain red-teaming; coup-proofing an AGI project |
| 5 | AI character, epistemics, and choosing your lever | ~57 min | Two project pre-proposals | Project speed-dating; direction commitment |
| 6–9 | Project phase (see Project Phase Guide) | — | Milestones M1–M4 | Proposal workshop → midpoint clinic → peer review → showcase |
Logistics
- Format: Cohorts of 4–8 fellows plus a trained facilitator, one 2-hour discussion session per week, run from a shared discussion doc.
- Time commitment: ~5 hours/week (Weeks 1–5), prep + 2-hour weekly session, then ~5–10 hours/week during the project phase (Weeks 6–9).
- Communication: Each cohort gets a shared Slack channel for questions, links, and accountability.
- Location: remote
- Cost: free
How to apply
This is an expression of interest, not a full application. IThis course is based on research by William MacAskill and his colleagues at Forethought Institute.t should take about 3 minutes. We'll follow up with you once applications open.
Submit your expression of interest
- EOI deadline: 10 July
- Course start date (tentative): 10 August
- Questions: dennis@aiscollab.org
This curriculum draws on Forethought's published research program on better futures, and was developed with feedback from Forethought's team. If you're interested in following the underlying research rather than the fellowship itself, see Forethought's Better Futures series.