3 Innovative Ways to Govern AI
How can we govern AI to harness all its great value, but also mitigate its risks? Explore the top 3 proposals from our recent hackathon for some concrete suggestions!

Intelligence stands as perhaps the most crucial factor in human progress. We've evolved from cave dwellers to inhabitants of modern homes with electricity and clean water, enjoying a quality of life our ancestors could scarcely have imagined. Yet intelligence also poses significant risks – it's given us both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.
The advent of transformative AI could magnify both the benefits and dangers of intelligence. Unlike the gradual emergence of human intelligence, we have a unique opportunity to influence AI's development. This raises important questions: What societal goals could AI help us achieve? What existing institutions are relevant to this endeavor? How can we learn from their strengths and weaknesses to create better institutions for harnessing transformative AI's potential?
To address these questions, Foresight Institute and the Future of Life Institute convened leading experts in AI, policy, law, economics, and related fields for a two-day event this spring: the Existential Hope Transformative AI Institution Design Hackathon. The event aimed to design institutions capable of guiding transformative AI development for humanity's benefit. Proposed institutions were evaluated based on feasibility, practicality, and potential positive impact. For more details on the hackathon's procedures and outcomes, please refer to our comprehensive report.



Here are the three winning institutions:
1. Can AI Make Us Happier? The Flourishing Foundation's Proposal for a Human-Centered Future (Hackathon Winner)
The Flourishing Foundation is an independent innovation lab that tackles the question: can AI make us happier? Their mission is to ensure that powerful new technologies like AI benefit humanity and the planet.
This interdisciplinary group of scientists, designers, engineers, and artists believe technology should strengthen our connections - to ourselves, each other, and the natural world. They advocate for "life-giving" economic systems, arguing that deploying AI within current economic structures won't necessarily improve well-being.
The Flourishing Foundation takes a systems-thinking and life-centric design approach. Here's how:
Operationalize Research: Translate interdisciplinary research into knowledge frameworks that better guide conscious technology creation: e.g. alternative well-being based success metric for consumer tech products and services other than “engagement”.
Incubate Products: Provide holistic and hands-on support for innovators to design and run experiments with a focus on conscious/humane use of transformative technologies: e.g. AI-enabled solutions for elderly care and family connection.
Build Movement: Build awareness by mobilizing innovator communities to channel their creative energy towards conscious tech creation: e.g. weekly meetups, quarterly build days, and symposiums.
Listen to our podcast episode with the winning team here:
2. AI for Democracy? The Global Deliberation Coordinator Aims to Revolutionize Global Decision-Making (Shared Second Place)
The Global Deliberation Coordinator (GDC) is a new approach to global decision-making through "Global Deliberation as a Service" (GDaaS). GDC is a coordinating body that works with partners around the world to convene a representative microcosm of the planet -- and equip them with the structure and resources needed for high-quality deliberation.
These global deliberations can be utilized by international organizations, governments, and companies to prove input or make critical decisions that put “humanity in the loop”. Through an advanced market commitment, pilot projects, and integration of cutting-edge AI and deliberative technology, the GDC seeks to demonstrate the feasibility and impact of this new model.
By making global deliberative processes more accessible and impactful, the GDC aims to strengthen humanity's collective decision-making capabilities in the face of planetary challenges like artificial intelligence development and climate change. GDaaS offers a powerful new tool for incorporating the considered will of the people into how we navigate the crucial choices ahead.
3. Preparing for the Unexpected: Transformative Simulations Research Institute (Shared Second Place)
The Transformative Simulations Research Institute (TSR) is a new organization dedicated to rigorously modeling how individuals, groups, and societies may respond to the emergence of transformative artificial intelligence (TAI) capabilities. As TAI systems grow more powerful, there are risks of misaligned or adversarial development that could destabilize or threaten humanity.
To help mitigate these risks, TSR employs cutting-edge simulation techniques like wargaming exercises, computational games, and human-led scenario roleplays to systematically investigate potential TAI trajectories from multiple perspectives. By developing an empirically-grounded, multidisciplinary understanding of the cognitive patterns, social dynamics, and ethical issues that may arise when advanced AI intersects with human actors, TSR aims to equip policymakers and technologists with crucial foresight.
TSR's goal is to steer transformative AI development toward robustly beneficial outcomes that safeguard human flourishing over the long term. TSR's simulations chart the vast possibility space of TAI-enabled events and human decision pathways, identifying potential pitfalls but also constructive governance frameworks. The institute pioneers novel experiential modeling approaches to reality-test our assumptions and future-proof society against catastrophic AI failure modes as this powerful technology advances.
You can already discover the work started by TSR here!
To put these ideas into practice, all three of the above proposals received a small grant and are currently being incubated into real-world institutions. We look forward to following their evolution!
We extend our gratitude to all who contributed - from our hackathon teams, to the judges, mentors, and the Future of Life Institute. Stay tuned for further updates on the implementation of these ideas!
Resources to explore:
Explore more on existentialhope.com!