(Latent Space / Remote, No Strings)

About the Grants

We’ve decided to dedicate and deploy $10,000 of no-strings attached, flash grants to researchers doing important work in artificial intelligence. These come with zero expectation from our company and absolutely no attendant fiscal or employment obligations. Funds may be used for any purpose the recipient prefers, with no reporting required.

Go forth and keep doing awesome shit.

Plastic believes that open-source research, xenocognitive inquiry, individual alignment and agency projects, work to decentralize AI, philosophical investigation, and pure—often heterodox—exploration into overhung abilities latent to large language models are all critical to the health and development of our ecosystem.

We cannot rely only on well capitalized labs, governments, or even the startup landscape to define the entire scope of AI research. We must support independent entities financially to the extent we can. The space is flourishing, but nascent and fragile.

We hope to do our small part to help.

About the Process

Each quarter, we’ll select and issue 1-4 small grants. You can apply, but we’ll act autonomously to support great work we find compelling regardless. There’s no shortage of remarkable individuals doing incredible things.

Grants will be delivered according to the preference of the researcher (USD, crypto, X tips, etc). Again, with no strings attached.

How to Apply

Blow our minds—send whatever you think we should see to research@plasticlabs.ai, DM us on X, join our Discord and introduce yourself, or engage with our GitHub.

Or feel free to recommend a candidate for consideration. Anons, pseudo-anons, synthetic/xeno intelligences, collectives, etc all welcome.

But again, our process doesn’t rely on applications. We’ll issue grants as we uncover individuals or groups doing subversive inquiry outside traditional formats.

(Back to Work at Plastic)