Guide to the Alliance

Our goals, how we divide work, and our next steps.

The world is not going in the right direction. We need new ideas. The Alliance is just that, but it will only work if we all participate.
Janos PasztorFormer UN Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Change

Introduction

The Alliance aims to facilitate large-scale coordination over the Internet. We are focused on four global crises: extreme poverty, environmental destruction, democratic decline, and dangerous technological development.

Reliability is key to our strategy. Members commit to participate in weekly projects that advance our shared goals. Since we can count on members, we can plan projects with precision and predict whether they will succeed.

We are in an experimental, invite-only stage. Eventually, we hope to unite millions of people behind an expert-guided, democratically approved plan that strategically mobilizes our collective economic, political, and social resources.

Structure

The Alliance is composed of:

  1. A full-time office that designs tasks to advance our priorities.
  2. Members who commit to complete tasks assigned to them.

Members complete task on our web and mobile apps.

We depend on members reliably completing the tasks they are assigned. Since we know exactly how many people will participate in an action, we can plan precise and effective actions. For example, we can:

  • Build a base of common knowledge over time.
  • Plan experiments with statistical significance.
  • Make lifestyle changes only when there are enough members to have a meaningful total impact.
  • Negotiate agreements with third parties, such as corporations, backed by credible financial incentives (such as a bulk purchase or promise of boycott).

New members enter into a membership agreement that sets a clear expectation of reliability. Once they enter into an agreement, we start to assign them tasks. If a member does not complete the tasks they are assigned, we automatically suspend their agreement and no longer assign them tasks. They can enter into the agreement again at any time.

  1. I commit to complete up to 15 minutes of Alliance tasks per week.

  2. I commit to complete every task I am assigned by its deadline, unless:

    a. I have spent more than 15 minutes completing Alliance tasks in the past week.

    b. I cannot complete the task due to a serious external circumstance, such as a medical issue or family emergency. In this case, I will inform the strategic office as soon as I can.

    c. I believe the task is immoral. In this case, I will inform the strategic office of my reasoning by the deadline for the task.

  3. I understand that if I miss any assigned non-optional task for 3 weeks in a row, my agreement will be suspended automatically.

Our current membership agreement

Projects

The office plans projects to advance our priorities, and breaks them down into step-by-step tasks that members can complete.

Planning projects is a creative, open-ended process that searches for levers of change which members can pull.

When ideating for and developing a project, we weigh many considerations. For instance:

  • How does the project relate to the priorities of the Alliance?
  • Will the project produce a tangible impact on the world?
  • Will the project make effective use of members' time?
  • Will the project have any compounding effects – for instance, by providing an educational opportunity or growing the Alliance's network?

Examples of projects we have completed:

  • Environment

We collected a total of 1,022 pieces of trash

around our communities.

  • Technology

We held a direct discussion between members and anonymous AI researchers

to facilitate common understanding of the risks and harms of AI.

  • Democracy

7 libraries around the world put up posters on a fact of our choice

after we voted on facts we wanted more people to know.

Priorities

Our efforts are focused on four global crises: extreme poverty, environmental destruction, the decline of democratic institutions, and dangerous technological development.

By restricting our focus to problems that are widely recognized as urgent, we believe we can build a broad coalition with clear, shared goals.

These crises represent egregious violations of our foundational moral principle: that we should not treat others in ways that we do not want to be treated. They cause, or have the potential to cause, enormous harm to billions of people.

In addition, these crises are amenable to coordinated action by individuals, because they are the complex result of decisions made by billions of people over time. If we can strategically channel trillions of dollars, billions of hours of work, and millions of voices, we can make rapid and enormous progress.

Extreme poverty

Over 800 million people live on less than $3 a day, commonly suffering from malnutrition and dying from preventable diseases.

Environmental destruction

The overuse of land, overexploitation of natural resources, climate change, pollution, and invasive species are driving a mass extinction in nature.

Democratic decline

More countries are losing democratic qualities than at any time since the 1940s, and measures of global freedom have fallen for 19 years.

Dangerous technologies

Biotechnology lowers the barrier to engineering deadly pathogens, and experts warn artificial intelligence poses a risk of extinction.

Roadmap

Right now, we are running small-scale actions with the primary goal of learning, not direct impact. We are focused on building internal processes and structures that we can trust to scale smoothly, including the way we develop and evaluate actions. We expect this phase to last for at least another 6 months.

Once we are confident in our processes and structures, we will launch publicly. After this point, we will shift our focus to growth and impact.

As the Alliance grows, we plan to bring together experts from diverse fields to make increasingly impactful, long-term plans. Our online platform will enable direct communication between these experts and millions of members to enact rapid, large-scale change.

It is difficult to know exactly which projects we will undertake as we grow. However, a few broad categories of projects include:

Economic shifts

Members change what they buy and use.

  • Enforce an ethical standard on an industry by only buying from companies that meet it.
  • Build healthier social media apps and all switch to them at once.

Pooled funding

Members contribute money toward a shared goal.

  • Fund entrepreneurial and educational programs in low-income countries to help build sustainable economies.
  • Incubate non-profit, democratic media companies.

Social pressure

Members get institutions to act.

  • Direct public attention to an AI company and demand a specific safety policy.
  • Run a membership-wide education campaign to build global support for an enforceable biodiversity treaty.

Direct action

Members do work at scale.

  • Design and take part in the world's largest citizen science projects.
  • Create and take part in massive ecosystem restoration programs.

Resources

Make our next project more impactful

Join the waitlist