ControlAI's mission is to avert the extinction risks posed by superintelligent AI. We believe that in order to do this, we must secure an international prohibition on its development.

We're working to make this happen through what we believe is the most natural and promising approach: helping decision-makers in governments and the public understand the risks and take action.

We believe that ControlAI can achieve an international prohibition on ASI development if scaled sufficiently. We estimate that it would take approximately a $50 million yearly budget in funding to give us a concrete chance at achieving this in the next few years. To be more precise: conditional on receiving this funding in the next few months, we feel we would have ~10% probability of success.

In this post, we lay out some of the reasoning behind this estimate, and explain how additional funding past that threshold would continue to significantly improve our chances of success, with $500 million a year producing an estimated ~30% probability of success. [1]

Preventing ASI 101

Negotiating, implementing and enforcing an international prohibition on ASI is, in and of itself, not the work of a single non-profit. You [...]

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Outline:

(01:17) Preventing ASI 101

(05:44) Awareness is the bottleneck

(09:38) An asymmetric war

(12:08) Scalable processes

(17:32) What wed do with $50 million or more per year

(18:45) US policy advocacy

(21:22) Policy advocacy in the rest of the world

(23:37) Public awareness

(31:15) Grassroots mobilization

(32:31) Policy work

(33:59) Thought-leader advocacy

(36:05) Attracting and retaining the best talent

(37:18) Conclusion

The original text contained 28 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
April 21st, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TnAR5Sf5hphfnzNTr/usd50-million-a-year-for-a-10-chance-to-ban-asi-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Flowchart showing a theory of change for a superintelligence ban campaign.

Comparison chart showing perception versus reality across four communication stages: attention, information, persuasion, and action.

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″$50 million a year for a 10% chance to ban ASI” by Andrea_Miotti, Alex Amadori, Gabriel Alfour

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

″$50 million a year for a 10% chance to ban ASI” by Andrea_Miotti, Alex Amadori, Gabriel Alfour