Organisation
Future of Life Institute
A non-profit working to reduce catastrophic and existential risks from advanced technology; author of the 2023 open letter calling for a pause on giant AI experiments.
The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a non-profit, founded in 2014 by the MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn and others, that works to reduce catastrophic and existential risks from powerful technologies — artificial intelligence chief among them. It became widely known in March 2023 when it published the open letter "Pause Giant AI Experiments", which called for a six-month halt to training systems more powerful than GPT-4 and drew tens of thousands of signatures, including Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell and Elon Musk. Supporters said it named a real risk that industry was ignoring; critics argued the pause was unworkable and distracted from present-day harms. FLI also runs grant programmes, worked on the EU AI Act, and publishes an annual "AI Safety Index" scoring the major labs.
- Category
- Policy, governance & think tanks
- Founded
- 2014
- HQ
- Campbell, US
- Key people
- Max Tegmark
Appears alongside
Featured in threads
Tracks
- Ideas & essays 3
- Government & policy 2
- Safety & alignment 1
AI Futures Project publishes 'AI 2040: Plan A'
A normative scenario, not a prediction, proposing US-China chip-tracking and datacentre-auditing agreements to hold off superintelligence until 2040 while funding large universal dividends.
Ideas & essays · Government & policy
Future of Life Institute publishes the 'Statement on Superintelligence'
More than 700 signatories spanning AI researchers, Nobel laureates and right-wing media figures called for a conditional ban; Sam Altman and Mustafa Suleyman were among the notable non-signatories.
Ideas & essays · Safety & alignment
The "Pause Giant AI Experiments" open letter
Thirty thousand signatories called for a six-month halt on training systems more powerful than GPT-4. No lab paused.
Ideas & essays · Government & policy