Project summary

We aim to accelerate the creation of strong human germline genomic engineering.

For children born using this technology, many major diseases would be prevented, which currently end or diminish the lives of many millions of people. The spans of life, health, and cognitive health would be greatly extended. Potentially, parents could choose to nudge the personality traits of their future children--e.g. making brave, kind, curious, reliable, determined people. What is definitely feasible is increasing IQ, which, while not being anywhere near to everything that matters even about specifically cognitive capacity, is nevertheless a minimum viable pathway to making there be many more people who can achieve groundbreaking scientific and philosophical insights. Crucially, this technology is humanity's best hope for making a generation of people who will be able to fully deal with the existential threat of AGI.

Our plans are to tap into techno-optimist, humanist, and existential-derisking capital---financial, political, and human---to accelerate the remaining scientific discoveries and technological innovations that are prerequisite to safe, accessible, powerful germline engineering.

Strategy behind this project

The supersupergoal of this project is to decrease existential risk. Technical AGI alignment is likely far too difficult for the current generation of humans (see e.g. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nwpyhyagpPYDn4dAW/the-field-of-ai-alignment-a-postmortem-and-what-to-do-about). The only hope is to delay the creation of AGI, at least until humans can solve AGI alignment.

Pursuant to that, the supergoal of this project is to accelerate strong human intelligence amplification. The main way this helps is by making there be smarter people who can solve AGI alignment. A secondary benefit is to offer a vision for humanity's imminent thriving through intelligence that does not require making AGI.

The only strong human intelligence amplification method that is both likely to work and likely to be feasible soon is strong human germline genomic engineering; see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jTiSWHKAtnyA723LE/overview-of-strong-human-intelligence-amplification-methods.

Therefore the goal of this project is to accelerate strong human germline genomic engineering.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

(This is copied from https://berkeleygenomics.org/.)

Our mission is to unlock the promise of safe, accessible, and powerful germline genetic engineering for humanity.

Our plans:

• Publicly present the case in favor of making human germline engineering technology soon.

• Work out and describe how to make this technology in a safe, socially beneficial, widely accessible, and effective way.

• Through dialogue with scientists, the public, and policymakers, create innovation-positive ethical guidelines and legal regulation for germline engineering.

• Generate social momentum and help potential funders, scientists, and entrepreneurs to coordinate.

How will this funding be used?

Salary for me for up to two years, payment for research contractors, payment for event operations.

With minimal funding I can, you know, have an apartment for an additional month. Full funding would enable me to focus on work instead of fundraising and to contract more help to go faster.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

It's me and my cofounder Rachel Reid.

Rachel is focusing on running events. in 2025 we've held 3 talks from experts on aspects of germline engineering, with more coming. In June we're hosting a summit: https://berkeleygenomics.org/events/ReproFro2025.html

I don't have a track record on similar projects. In the past 3 years I've studied the field (reading, writing, networking, fundraising for other people). In 2025 I made http://berkeleygenomics.org/, and wrote a book on technical methods for strong germline engineering: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2w6hjptanQ3cDyDw7/methods-for-strong-human-germline-engineering

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Causes of failure:

• AGI comes too soon for the next generation of geniuses to help. There's both substantial probability of this happening, and substantial probability of this not happening: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sTDfraZab47KiRMmT/views-on-when-agi-comes-and-on-strategy-to-reduce But the calculus still works out to this intervention being very high impact in expectation: https://tsvibt.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-benefit-of-intervening-sooner.html

• Strong germline engineering is not feasible in the next 5-20 years. I think this is unlikely as the core technologies don't appear to be extremely difficult to develop, and there are some disjunctive pathways. See: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2w6hjptanQ3cDyDw7/methods-for-strong-human-germline-engineering

• There actually isn't much philanthropic funding to be tapped, and the goal can't be reached via commercially viable projects.

• BGP can't access the funding and investment capital that there is.

• The regulatory situation stays bad / gets worse. This would delay uptake, pushing back the benefits.

Outcomes:

The most likely outcome of failure is simply that nothing especially useful happens. Some more articles will be written which could be marginally helpful. There might also be some mean news articles written about the project.

There are potential perils to success, described here: https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Potential_perils_of_germline_genomic_engineering.html

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

$0 from nowhere, 0 explanations given. I'm just burning through my meager personal savings.