About Us
Mission
Our mission is to guide humanity toward vibrant and flourishing futures through the application of underutilized foresight techniques.
Vision
Our vision is to be an organization associated with rigorous research that is practically useful for policymakers and decision makers with the power to influence government policy on mitigating catastrophic and existential risk.
Why We Exist
TFI was formed to explore the use of underutilized foresight methods and tools in order to better anticipate societal-scale risks from transformative technologies. While we perceive there to be many risks to humanity’s long-term prosperity, the rapid advancements in AI appear to be the most pressing of these.
Our Role
In contrast to many organizations working to address catastrophic and existential risk from advanced AI, TFI specializes in foresight techniques. Through the use of these techniques, we can enable more comprehensive assessments of AI risks. Such assessments are critical in supporting decision making for stakeholders in positions to shape the future societal impact of AI, thus ensuring that we maximize the potential for a positive future for humanity as AI technology rapidly progresses.
What We Do
At TFI we focus our energy on creating high-quality research related to societal-scale AI risk, which falls under our three key focus areas:
- Crisis management planning and wargaming
- Agent based modeling of AI futures
- Existential resilience (resilience planning for an AI catastrophe)
Our Impact
Disseminating our relevant research among key stakeholders is key to our impact. We do this by disseminating our work directly to organizations and policymakers in DC, as well as through academic publishing.
Our Values
TFI seeks for humanity to follow a trajectory toward vibrant and prosperous futures, and we believe that identifying and addressing neglected areas of research in foresight is the most valuable way to advance this objective. We highly value rigorous and robust academic quality research, whether or not it is published in academic outlets, and we hope that our research can contribute to high standards for others working in the space.
Objective
Our mission is to guide humanity toward vibrant and flourishing futures.
To this end, TFI leverages foresight and forecasting methods to anticipate societal-scale risks from transformative AI.
Why We Exist
Indeed, rapid AI progress is already transforming all aspects of society—from how we work to how we learn, to how we envisage to fight future wars. What we do to prepare for and manage this technological transformation in the coming years will determine the remainder of human history. We therefore feel that we must act urgently to steer AI development in a direction that will mitigate harm and maximize benefit for human civilization.
Our Role
What We Do
At TFI we focus our energy on creating high-quality research related to societal-scale AI risk, which falls under our three key focus areas:
- Foresight and Forecasting
- Structural Risks From AI
- AI Governance and Evaluations
Our Impact
Disseminating our relevant research among key stakeholders is key to our impact. Current readerships include the RAND Corporation, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) and their AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC), individuals involved in the UK AI Safety Institute Summit, and other individuals working in Washington, D.C. Check out Our Work to learn more!
Our Values
TFI values the future of humanity and believes that mitigating near- to medium- term risks from advanced AI is the most important thing we can do to protect it. As a research organization, TFI values high-quality robust research which includes integrity, novelty, and timely dissemination. Since technology is advancing rapidly, TFI values flexibility, nimbleness, and the ability to pivot quickly to respond to emerging AI safety and governance concerns.