--- alias: - FLI category: Private Organization created: 2026-06-19 location: Cambridge, Massachusetts summary: The Future of Life Institute is a nonprofit founded in 2014 by Max Tegmark and others to address existential risks from advanced technology, funded with an early ten million dollar gift from Elon Musk, that published the 2023 open letter calling for a pause on giant AI experiments. tags: - Organization - FutureOfLifeInstitute - ArtificialIntelligence - ExistentialRisk - EffectiveAltruism - ElonMusk updated: 2026-06-19 --- The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit organization founded in March 2014 by the [MIT](/organizations/massachusetts-institute-of-technology/) physicist Max Tegmark, the Estonian programmer [Jaan Tallinn](/people/jaan-tallinn/), and the researchers Viktoriya Krakovna, Anthony Aguirre, and Meia Chita-Tegmark, to steer transformative technologies away from large-scale risks to humanity. It is one of the principal organizations of the artificial-intelligence existential-risk movement, alongside the [Machine Intelligence Research Institute](/organizations/machine-intelligence-research-institute/), and it shares the [Effective Altruism](/concepts/effective-altruism/) and longtermist donor base and worldview.[^1][^2] ### Musk Funding and Early Work [Elon Musk](/people/elon-musk/), who had been influenced by [Nick Bostrom](/people/nick-bostrom/)'s warnings about superintelligence, donated ten million dollars to the institute in January 2015, money that funded about seven million dollars in research grants on AI safety. The institute's first conference, held in Puerto Rico from January 2 to 5, 2015, gathered AI researchers with economists, lawyers, and ethicists to set priorities for "robust and beneficial" AI; in July 2015 FLI announced grants of nearly seven million dollars to 37 research teams from the Musk gift. The January 2017 Asilomar conference produced the 23 "Asilomar AI Principles" on research goals, ethics, and longer-term risks, an early and widely cited governance framework.[^2][^6] Tallinn, a cofounder of Skype and a major funder of the rationalist and AI-risk ecosystem, sits among its backers. In May 2021 the Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin gave the institute a cryptocurrency donation later disclosed in an EU transparency filing as worth roughly 665 million dollars, much of it in Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens; the institute cashed out about 500 million dollars, far more than Buterin said he had expected given the token's liquidity. Buterin subsequently distanced himself from FLI, saying its later turn toward "cultural and political action" risked authoritarian outcomes and could be used to restrict open-source AI.[^3][^7] ### The 2023 Pause Letter In March 2023 the institute published "Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter," calling on all AI labs to halt for at least six months the training of systems more powerful than GPT-4, citing risks of AI-generated propaganda, mass job automation, human obsolescence, and a loss of societal control. The letter gathered more than thirty thousand signatures, including Musk, the Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, the historian Yuval Noah Harari, and the AI researchers Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell. No pause occurred; the AI companies instead expanded their training infrastructure, and the letter became the most prominent public expression of the AI-doom position associated with [Eliezer Yudkowsky](/people/eliezer-yudkowsky/) and the longtermist movement.[^4][^5] Yudkowsky himself declined to sign and published his "Shut it all down" essay in *Time* days later arguing the letter asked for far too little. The early signatory list also drew scrutiny when several names were revealed to be impersonations the institute had not verified, including fake signatures attributed to [Sam Altman](/people/sam-altman/), Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, and Chinese president Xi Jinping, which FLI removed after tightening its vetting; critics also noted that some genuine signatories led companies positioned to benefit from a pause that slowed competitors. The letter nonetheless shaped the 2023 policy debate, feeding into the United Kingdom's November 2023 AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park and the wider governmental turn toward frontier-AI oversight.[^4][^9] ### The Nya Dagbladet Grant Controversy In January 2023 the Swedish anti-racist foundation Expo reported that FLI, through Tegmark, had offered a 100,000 dollar grant to the foundation behind Nya Dagbladet, a Swedish outlet that had published far-right and racist conspiracy content. Tegmark's brother had connections to the Swedish alternative-media scene, which drew further attention to the episode.[^8] FLI said it had offered the grant before completing due diligence, became aware of the outlet's "right-wing extremist" affiliations during that process roughly three months later, and immediately revoked the offer, and it stated that the foundation had received no funding and would receive none. The institute published a statement on the rejected proposal in response to the reporting. The controversy sharpened existing concerns about the opacity of FLI's grantmaking and the politics of its expanding cryptocurrency-funded budget.[^8] [^1]: "New International Grants Program Jump-Starts Research to Ensure AI Remains Beneficial," Future of Life Institute, 2015, on the founding and the grants program. https://futureoflife.org/ai/2015selection/ [^2]: "How Elon Musk is trying to make sure AI doesn't wipe out humanity," *Malay Mail* / Associated Press, July 2, 2015, on the ten million dollar Musk donation. https://www.malaymail.com/news/tech/gadgets/2015/07/02/how-elon-musk-is-trying-to-make-sure-ai-doesnt-wipe-out-humanity/925841 [^3]: "Elon Musk-Backed Non-Profit Offered $100K Grant to 'Pro-Nazi' Media Outlet," *Vice,* on the institute's funding and a later grant controversy. https://www.vice.com/en/article/future-of-life-institute-max-tegmark-elon-musk/ [^4]: Future of Life Institute. "Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter," March 2023. https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/ [^5]: "FAQs about FLI's Open Letter Calling for a Pause on Giant AI Experiments," Future of Life Institute, 2023, and the one-year-later assessment. https://futureoflife.org/ai/faqs-about-flis-open-letter-calling-for-a-pause-on-giant-ai-experiments/ [^6]: "New International Grants Program Jump-Starts Research to Ensure AI Remains Beneficial," Future of Life Institute, 2015, on the January 2015 Puerto Rico conference, the July 2015 grants of nearly seven million dollars to 37 teams, and the 2017 Asilomar AI Principles. https://futureoflife.org/ai/2015selection/ [^7]: "Future of Life Institute received $665 million in crypto," Philanthropy News Digest, on the May 2021 Vitalik Buterin SHIB donation disclosed in a 2023 EU filing, and "Vitalik Buterin questions political pivot by AI safety group that cashed out roughly $500M from his SHIB donation," *The Block.* https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/future-of-life-institute-received-undisclosed-665-million-in-crypto [^8]: "Elon Musk-Backed Non-Profit Offered $100K Grant to 'Pro-Nazi' Media Outlet," *Vice,* 2023, and "Statement on a controversial rejected grant proposal," Future of Life Institute, 2023, on the offered and revoked Nya Dagbladet grant. https://futureoflife.org/rejection_statement/ [^9]: "The Open Letter to Stop 'Dangerous' AI Race Is a Huge Mess," *Vice,* 2023, on the fake signatures attributed to Sam Altman, Yann LeCun, and Xi Jinping and the institute's tightened vetting. https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-open-letter-to-stop-dangerous-ai-race-is-a-huge-mess/