sector · cluster
AI & x-risk
Make the transition to transformative AI survivable.
Frontier AI is the one x-risk currently accelerating rather than slowing. The work is technical (interpretability, evals, corrigibility, sandboxed deployment) and institutional (governance, verification, international coordination). Aligned and corrigible AI unlocks most other quests on the leaderboard; misaligned AI forecloses them.
lead voice
80,000 Hours · AI problem profile →Problems in this sector
2 rankedEnsure increasingly capable AI systems remain corrigible, honest, and aligned with human values.
Prevent engineered and naturally-emerging pandemics from wiping out humanity or crippling civilization.
Companies on it
10 mapped →AI safety company building Claude. Constitutional AI, mechanistic interpretability, and frontier-scale alignment research.
Originally nonprofit research lab, now capped-profit. Safety and superalignment teams alongside capabilities work.
Alignment-focused AI lab. Runs Conjecture Institute for critical rationalist research on AI safety.
Applied alignment research, adversarial evaluation, AI control, and mechanistic interpretability.
Third-party evaluation of frontier AI models for dangerous capabilities. Pre-deployment testing protocols.
Mechanistic interpretability as a product, tools for editing model internals rather than just observing.
Cell programming platform. Biosecurity Division runs metagenomic surveillance and pathogen detection at scale.
mRNA platform company. Pandemic preparedness via rapid vaccine development, plus pipeline in malaria, HIV, and rare disease.
Sentinel surveillance using metagenomic sequencing of wastewater to detect novel pathogens before they spread.
De-extinction and genetic engineering. Biosecurity adjacency via rapid genome editing and cold-chain logistics.
Capital on it
5 allocators →Emergent Ventures
GrantFast grants. High-variance, unconventional, talent-first.
Thiel Fellowship
Fellowship$100k to stop out of school and build something important.
Founders Fund
Venture CapitalContrarian hard tech that rebuilds the industrial base.
a16z American Dynamism
Venture CapitalNational-interest technology, aerospace, defense, manufacturing, public safety.
Lux Capital
Venture CapitalCounter-conventional science at the edges of physics and biology.