This is a linkpost for Request for Proposals: Research and Applied Work on Digital Minds.

The text below was written in the first person by Zach Freitas-Groff, Longview's lead on digital minds. He posted it on the EA Forum, and I'm reposting it for him on LessWrong.

I'm glad to announce a new request for proposals for research and applied work on digital minds at Longview Philanthropy. We’re seeking applications for project grants, research fellowships, and career development fellowships on the potential consciousness, sentience, moral status, and legal position of AI systems, and on how society might respond. The deadline is Friday July 10, 2026.

Much of what we’re looking for is the same as what we were looking for last year, so I’ll direct people to last year’s post and then share a few updates that have informed the drafting of the RFP:

• This year’s RFP lays out somewhat more specific technical research directions we’d like to see:
  • Issues around valence and preferences seem especially neglected relative to the question of “are they conscious?” Even in philosophy, there’s been far less discussion of what it means to experience something as good or bad, and still less about what this could mean for an AI model. I’d like to see more work here from neuroscientists, ML researchers, and philosophers.
  • There’s been a lot of progress on introspection and self reports in the past year, and I’d like to see a vibrant debate about what various findings mean as well as further work to explore how much LLMs are able to generate accurate self reports, when, and why.
  • Trade and agent interactions seem more important now than they did a year ago, with AI agents acting more autonomously now than they did before. There’s been some discussion of these issues from a safety perspective, but I’d like to see more discussion of what this means for AI systems’ interests, if they have them.
• Compared to last year, I’m relatively more interested in work on how society can and should respond to the possibility or perception of AI models with moral status. I’m excited by work like these expert interviews on digital minds governance. 
  • Topics we list include “if-then” commitments, third-party auditors, duties to uphold the law, novel corporate structures, research protocols, citizens’ assemblies, expert panels, and risks of gradual disempowerment. 
  • I'm also newly interested in supporting people who think about how religious traditions and communities will approach these questions.

The opportunities, briefly:

• Grants for applied work, for starting, continuing, or expanding an organisation, project, or independent effort.
• Research fellowships, for people with a PhD, JD, or equivalent in a relevant technical field, law, medicine, or applied social science.
• Career development fellowships, for people moving into the field.

If you've been waiting on the sidelines, now is a good time to jump in. Questions can go to digitalminds-rfp@longview.org.