Digital sentience funding opportunities: Support for applied work and research

By zdgroff, Longview Philanthropy @ 2025-05-28T17:35 (+110)

Summary

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.

• Apply to Research Fellowship
• Apply to Career Transition Fellowship
• Apply to Request for Proposals

Motivation & Focus

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:

• Technically informed research on which AI systems are sentient, like this paper applying existing theories of consciousness to a few AI architectures.
• Innovative approaches to investigate sentience, potentially in a way that avoids having to take a stand on a particular theory of consciousness, like work on  AI introspection.
• Political philosophy and policy research on the proper role of AI in society.
• Work to educate the public about the issue and improve the reasonableness of public discussion.
• Advice and applied work to make it more likely that AI models, if sentient, experience wellbeing.

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:

• AI systems that shape the future could be direct descendants of today’s models.
• Policy and political institutions can last a long time. Today’s decisions could affect future institutions or technology.
• Looking back at our history, society's values have been critically flawed in many ways. Taking an outside view, I think we should be careful about how we work with digital minds, even if we can't spell out exactly why.

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.

Three Funding Opportunities

There are three funding opportunities:

Research Fellowships on Digital Sentience

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:

• Proposing computational correlates of consciousness and valenced experiences.
• Measuring consciousness or valenced experiences in computational systems.
• Testing AI models' ability to introspect reliably.
• Proposing legal standards for recognizing digital minds.

For more information and to apply, please visit our Research Fellowships Page.

Career Transition Fellowships on Digital Sentience

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:

• Graduate students seeking support to study digital sentience.
• AI researchers exploring research topics in digital sentience.
• Communications professionals interested in conducting surveys on digital sentience.
• Nonprofit entrepreneurs planning to start organizations focused on digital sentience.
• Policy researchers aiming to develop policies addressing potential digital minds.

For more details and to apply, please visit our Career Transition Fellowships Page.

Request for Proposals: Applied Work on Potential Digital Sentience and Society

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:

• Building the field of digital sentience through conferences, workshops, and mentorship programs.
• Research on the features correlating with sentience and the extent to which AI systems possess these features.
• Exploration of governance systems for societies with conscious or highly agentic AI.
• Aligning AI models with compassion and well-being.
• Developing communication strategies regarding AI consciousness and welfare.

For more details and to apply, please visit our Request for Proposals.

Application Process

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.

Contact

For questions about the application process or to discuss potential projects, please contact me at zach@longview.org.