THE ALLIANCE

Guide to the Alliance

The Alliance is a global group of people cooperating to improve the world.

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. Every week, committed members participate in collective actions that advance our shared goals. Since we can count on members, we can plan each action with precision and predict whether it will succeed.

We are in an experimental, invite-only stage. Eventually, we hope to unite millions or hundreds of 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.

We built an online platform (web and mobile apps) that members use to complete tasks.

Ask your local cafe to switch to compostable cups

5 minutes

We negotiated a long-term 20% discount with a compostable cup supplier, available to all cafes that members frequently visit.

98 / 120 members completed

Loading...

Example task a member might see on the platform

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 sign a membership contract that sets a clear expectation of reliability. Once they sign a contract, we start to assign them tasks.

  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 I am considered an active member, and am therefore able to participate in Alliance governance, if I have completed at least 8 of the last 10 tasks I was assigned.

Our current membership contract

If a member does not complete the tasks they are assigned, we automatically suspend their contract and no longer assign them tasks. They can re-sign the contract at any time.

Actions

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

When ideating for and developing an action, we weigh many considerations. For instance:

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

Examples of actions we have taken:

Priorities

Our efforts are focused on four global crises:

  1. Extreme poverty
  2. Environmental destruction
  3. The decline of democratic institutions
  4. 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

More than 800 million people live in extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as living on less than $3 a day. At these income levels, malnutrition, preventable diseases, and child mortality are widespread. Progress on extreme poverty has slowed for the first time since the 1990s because of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased conflict, and other factors.

Environmental destruction

The primary drivers of environmental destruction are: the clearing and degradation of forests, wetlands, grasslands, coastal ecosystems, and other land for development and agriculture; overexploitation of wild plants and animals from legal and illegal harvesting; ecosystem disruptions from rising temperatures and changing weather patterns; pollution from agricultural, commercial, and industrial waste; and the introduction and spread of invasive species. The global rate of species extinction is at least tens to hundreds of times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years.

The decline of democratic institutions

The number of countries losing democratic qualities is higher than any period since the early 1940s. Measures of global freedom have declined for 19 consecutive years, with political rights assessed as decreasing for over 3 billion people in 2024. These declines typically involve the erosion of judicial independence, freedom of the press, and civil liberties, including measurable increases in human rights violations.

Dangerous technological development

Several emerging technologies pose potentially catastrophic risks. Advances in biotechnology are lowering the barriers to engineering deadly pathogens. Artificial intelligence systems undermine trusted information and could accelerate biological and cyber threats. A statement signed by leading AI researchers states: “[m]itigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

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 actions we will take as we grow. However, a few broad categories of actions include:

CategoryExamples
Economic shifts
  • We could enforce an ethical standard on an industry by asking members to only purchase from companies that meet it.
  • We could coordinate individual waste reductions to meet global waste reduction targets.
  • We could create healthier social media apps and all switch to them at once.
Pooled funding
  • We could pay large teams to undertake impactful work that could otherwise only be conducted by volunteers.
  • We could fund entrepreneurial and educational programs in low-income countries to help build sustainable economies.
  • We could incubate non-profit, democratic media companies.
Social pressure
  • We could direct public attention to an AI company and demand a specific safety policy.
  • We could run a membership-wide education campaign to create global support for an enforceable biodiversity treaty.
Direct action
  • We could design and participate in the world’s largest citizen science projects.
  • We could create and participate in massive ecosystem restoration programs.