The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in

Gardnerville, Nevada Gardnerville is an unincorporated town in Douglas County, Nevada, United States, adjacent to the county seat of Minden. The population was 6,211 at the 2020 census. U.S. Route 395 runs through the center of Gardnerville. State Route 207, kn ...

, dedicated to the prevention of

global catastrophic risk A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, endangering or even destroying modern civilization. Existential risk is a related term limited to events that co ...

. Technology journalist Ashlee Vance describes Lifeboat as "a nonprofit that seeks to protect people from some seriously catastrophic technology-related events". Prominent scholars from Lifeboat Foundation's Advisory Board includes 1986

Nobel Laureate The Nobel Prizes (, ) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in th ...

in Literature

Wole Soyinka Wole Soyinka , (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian author, best known as a playwright and poet. He has written three novels, ten collections of short stories, seven poetry collections, twenty five plays and five memoirs. He also wrote two transla ...

, 1993

in Medicine Richard J. Roberts, 2002

in Economic Sciences

Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman (; ; March 5, 1934 – March 27, 2024) was an Israeli-American psychologist best known for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making as well as behavioral economics, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memor ...

, and 2007

in Economic Sciences

Eric Maskin Eric Stark Maskin (born December 12, 1950) is an American economist and mathematician. He was jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson "for having laid the foundations of mechanism d ...

Organization

Lifeboat was founded by

online dating service Online dating, also known as internet dating, virtual dating, or mobile app dating, is a method used by people with a goal of searching for and interacting with potential romantic or sexual partners, via the internet. An online dating service ...

entrepreneur Eric Klien, who continues to run Lifeboat as president and chairman of the board of directors. The organization has raised over $500,000 in total donations from individuals and corporate

matching funds Matching funds are funds that are set to be paid in proportion to funds available from other sources. Matching fund payments usually arise in situations of charity or public good. The terms cost sharing, in-kind, and matching can be used inter ...

programs, most of which went to "supporting conferences and publishing papers". Writer and advisory board member Sonia Arrison describes the group as "basically a Website, that raises money for various things". In 2007, the Lifeboat Foundation absorbed an organization called the " Alliance to Rescue Civilization", which aimed to establish a disaster-proof record of

human civilization A civilization (also spelled civilisation in British English) is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond signed or spoken languag ...

on the Moon. Lifeboat has tried to raise more money by accepting donations in

Bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...

, a

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

. According to

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is an American business magazine published monthly in print and online, focusing on technology, business, and design. It releases six print issues annually. History ''Fast Company'' was founded in November 1995 by Alan Webb ...

, Lifeboat raised $72,000 in Bitcoin donations and pledges, and sought to use Bitcoin to protect itself against events such as the

2012–13 Cypriot financial crisis 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to s ...

. The Board of Directors includes Eric Klien, Carl Martinez, Philippe van Nedervelde, Chris K. Haley, Sergio Tarrero.

Activities

According to

, Lifeboat runs a number of "programs" to protect Earth against threats such as an

asteroid impact An impact event is a collision between astronomical objects causing measurable effects. Impact events have been found to regularly occur in planetary systems, though the most frequent involve asteroids, comets or meteoroids and have minimal effe ...

grey goo Gray goo (also spelled as grey goo) is a hypothetical global catastrophic scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating machines consume all biomass (and perhaps also everything else) on Earth while buil ...

from

molecular nanotechnology Molecular nanotechnology (MNT) is a technology based on the ability to build structures to complex, atomic specifications by means of mechanosynthesis. This is distinct from nanoscale materials. Based on Richard Feynman's vision of miniat ...

, and unfriendly

artificial general intelligence Artificial general intelligence (AGI)—sometimes called human‑level intelligence AI—is a type of artificial intelligence that would match or surpass human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. Some researchers argue that sta ...

. Lifeboat maintains a list of "dozens and dozens" of catastrophic threats - including the eventual burnout of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

— divided into four main categories of "calamities", "collapse", "dominium", and "betrayal". Journalist Ashlee Vance notes that it's "unclear how far along any of these projects is". The Lifeboat Foundation also publishes books, such as ''Visions of the Future'', an

anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs, or related fiction/non-fiction excerpts by different authors. There are also thematic and g ...

of futurist and

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

writing reviewed in the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...

''.

Guardian Award

The Lifeboat Foundation awards the Guardian Award every year to a leading scientist who has contributed most to the saving of humanity from existential risks.Schmidt, Nikola, ed. Planetary defense: Global collaboration for defending earth from asteroids and comets. Springer, 2018. Recent award recipients include Steve Mann (2024) and

Geoffrey Hinton Geoffrey Everest Hinton (born 1947) is a British-Canadian computer scientist, cognitive scientist, and cognitive psychologist known for his work on artificial neural networks, which earned him the title "the Godfather of AI". Hinton is Univer ...

(2023).

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Lifeboat Foundation website
Transhumanist organizations Non-profit organizations based in Nevada Existential risk organizations Organizations established in 2002 Artificial intelligence associations