Most of us don't think of power-hungry killer robots as an imminent threat to humanity, especially when poverty and the climate crisis are already ravaging the Earth. This wasn't the case for Sam Bankman-Fried and his followers, powerful actors who have embraced a school of thought within the effective altruism movement called "longtermism". In February, the Future Fund, a philanthropic organization endowed by the now-disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur, announced that it would be disbursing more than $100m – and possibly up to $1bn – this year on projects to "improve humanity's long-term prospects". The slightly cryptic reference might have been a bit puzzling to those who think of philanthropy as funding homelessness charities and medical NGOs in the developing world. In fact, the Future Fund's particular areas of interest include artificial intelligence, biological weapons and "space governance", a mysterious term referring to settling humans in space as a potential "watershed moment in human history".

First, we need to clear up terminology, like A.I. Safety, which sounds like a completely neutral, uncontroversial term. Who wouldn't want safe A.I. software? And you might think that the definition of A.I. "safety" would include A.I. that isn't racist or sexist or is used to abet genocide. All of which, by the way, are actual, documented concerns about today's existing A.I. software. Yet actually, none of those concerns are what A.I. researchers generally mean when they talk about "A.I. Instead, those things fall into the camp of "A.I.

Priya Lakhani was just days away from a crucial moment in the life of her start-up, Century Tech, an education firm which uses artificial intelligence to track a pupil's progress. She had a signed term sheet from an investor, which is a big deal in the start-up world, as it typically confirms a substantial investment and lays out the commercial and legal terms of that deal. But on 21 March, amid growing concern over coronavirus and with just 10 days to go before completion of the funding round, Century Tech's investor pulled out, leaving Ms Lakhani and her team worried about what would happen next. Term sheets are not usually legally binding, and pulling funding at such a critical point can leave start-ups in a precarious position. At the time, the government was yet to announce any help for start-ups specifically, but it soon did with its coronavirus Future Fund, which enables UK-based start-ups to apply for government loans ranging from £125,000 to £5m, subject to at least equal match funding from private investors.