Written by Zach Freitas-Groff and posted at his request.
I’m excited to announce a “Digital Sentience Consortium” hosted by Longview Philanthropy, in collaboration with The Navigation Fund and Macroscopic Ventures, to support research and applied projects focused on the potential consciousness, sentience, moral status, and experiences of artificial intelligence systems. The opportunities include research fellowships, career transition fellowships, and a broad request for proposals for applied work on these topics.
For years, I’ve thought this area was seriously overlooked. It now has growing interest. Twenty-two out of 123 pages of Claude 4’s model card are about its potential moral patienthood. Scientific experts increasingly say that near-term AI sentience is a real possibility; even the skeptical neuroscientist Anil Seth says, “it is unwise to dismiss the possibility altogether.” We’re hoping to bring new people and projects into the field to increase the chance that society deals with the possibility of digital sentience reasonably, and with concern for all involved.
For about as long as I’ve been reading about transformative AI, I’ve wondered whether society would face critical decisions involving AI sentience. Until recently, I thought there was not much to be done here besides perhaps more philosophy of mind and perhaps some ethics—and I was not sure these approaches would make much progress.
Now, I think there are live areas where people can contribute:
The goal of our Digital Sentience Consortium is to spur more work in these areas and more.
This is an area with a lot of uncertainty. Fundamental questions remain unanswered, the technologies and ways of studying them are all very novel, and there is no obvious existing talent pipeline for people to study digital sentience. As such, we’re taking a hits-based approach of trying a variety of promising approaches and seeing which pay off. I could imagine the grantmaking strategy evolving in many directions. I’m most excited about work that looks good under a variety of different worldviews, such as projects to improve our understanding of the problem and increase the number of people thinking seriously and reasonably about this topic.
I’m personally driven to work on this by the knowledge that (a) there are only a few dozen people working full-time on these questions, (b) society may be about to create a large number of systems whose nature is unclear to us, and (c) we may make path-dependent decisions about what happens to them:
There is no particular reason why I should be one of a few grantmakers working on issues of digital sentience. I’m an economist by training with no background in philosophy or computer science. But I’ve decided to throw myself in given its importance and stark neglectedness.
If you’ve been waiting on the sidelines, now is the time to jump in.
There are three funding opportunities:
These fellowships are intended for individuals with a doctoral degree or equivalent experience in computer science, neuroscience, or other technical disciplines. We will also consider applications from exceptional legal scholars and applied social scientists. Fellowships include salary support, research and travel funding, networking opportunities, and access to computational resources for compute-intensive research. Example research topics include:
For more information and to apply, please visit our Research Fellowships Page.
These fellowships support individuals interested in pivoting their careers to focus on digital sentience. Fellows will receive a living stipend, networking opportunities, and possible assistance in accessing computational resources. Ideal candidates include:
For more details and to apply, please visit our Career Transition Fellowships Page.
We invite proposals for applied projects that address the potential consciousness, sentience, moral status, or experiences of AI systems. Funding may support the founding of new organizations, establishment of new programs at existing institutions, applied academic work, and other relevant projects. Areas of interest include:
For more details and to apply, please visit our Request for Proposals.
The application deadline for all funding opportunities is July 9, 2025. Applications should include basic biographical information, resumes or CVs, project proposals, budgets, and other relevant materials as specified on the respective application pages.
For questions about the application process or to discuss potential projects, please contact me at zach@longview.org.