Alignment moonshot
Federal alignment research moonshot. Billions a year of federal funding for research on controlling and understanding AI.
What it does
The government would spend a few billion dollars a year, compared with roughly $15 million for the federal AI safety institute today, paying scientists to learn how AI models work inside and how to keep them under human control. The results would be shared with labs and used to test the most powerful models before release.
Applies to: Federal research budgets.
- Billions a year of federal funding for research on controlling and understanding AI.
Where things stand
Total federal AI R&D is about $3.3B a year (FY2025 NITRD request), of which safety and alignment is a small, unreported share. The UK's Alignment Project has about 27M pounds (15M government).
Why it costs ~6 days
Public money doesn't slow labs. Some researchers would move from building capabilities to safety work: about 2 days.
Biggest unknown: Whether more money can buy alignment progress quickly when the field is limited by talent and by access to frontier models held inside private labs.
Why it lowers p(doom) by ~0.3%
Pays for a huge public push to learn how to keep powerful AI under control.
Many researchers think the bottleneck is knowing how to control advanced AI at all. More funding speeds that up, though money alone doesn't guarantee breakthroughs.
The strongest case that it costs more
Government research programs move slowly, and the best safety work happens inside labs with access to frontier models.
The debate
For
- Samuel Hammond (Foundation for American Innovation) 'A Manhattan Project for AI Safety' (May 2023): government-coordinated safety research, secure data centers and interpretability testbeds costing several billion dollars.
- White House, America's AI Action Plan July 2025: DARPA-led technology development program for AI interpretability, AI control systems and adversarial robustness.
- Joe O'Brien (Federation of American Scientists) June 2025: 'CAISI+' with $155-275M setup and $67-155M per year for evaluation, emergency response and safety research.
- Rep. Kevin Kiley SAFE AI Research Grants Act (H.R. 6402, reintroduced Dec 2025): federal grants for alignment and risk-mitigation research; urged passage Sept 2026.
Against
- David Sacks (White House AI and crypto czar) Oct 2025: said Anthropic runs 'a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering', reflecting administration skepticism of the safety agenda.
- Trump administration FY2026 budget request 2025: proposed cutting NSF by 57% including basic AI research; Congress largely rejected it.
Sources
- America's AI Action Plan (July 2025): Interpretability and control research directive.
- DARPA AI Forge: DARPA-NSF-CAISI program on interpretability, control, robustness; no public budget.
- IFP: What Will It Cost for the US to Be Ready for the Next Big AI Breakthrough? (May 2026): CAISI about $15M now; FY2027 request $27M; proposals up to $84M.
- CNAS: Securing America's AI Future (June 2025): Recommends federal funding for robustness and interpretability; U.S. firms $109.1B AI R&D in 2024 vs $9.3B for China.
Rough starting points, not precise forecasts. Lead costs assume China doesn't depend on U.S. models, the case least favorable to safety laws, and count 3 years. On the menu you can change every assumption and put in your own numbers. Last priced 2026-09-26.