Global Priorities Research

“What should we do with a given amount of limited resources if our aim is to do the most good?” This is the central question of global priorities research (GPR). It’s a question that, for much of philanthropic history, received surprisingly little attention.

Early attempts to make headway on this question offered surprising answers. In 2007, GiveWell was established and found priority programmes in global health which likely achieve >10 times the benefit of other, similar global health programmes. Cost-effectiveness researchers found that the best way to improve education in Kenya wasn’t to provide uniforms, schoolbooks, or additional teachers, but was rather to provide deworming pills to reduce children’s sick days.

Research on how to do the most good continues to have surprising payoffs. Global priorities researchers have shaped our thinking on the cost-effectiveness of global catastrophic risk reduction and improving the long-term future.

Our funding for research on global priorities serves two ends. First, we aim to make progress on “crucial considerations” — questions which, if answered, could significantly change the way we prioritise between grant areas. Second, we aim to create academic resources that can be used by students, governments, and other foundations to inform their actions on global problems.

Are you a major philanthropist seeking to learn more about these areas? Get in touch with our Founder & President Natalie Cargill at natalie.enquiries@longview.org.

Featured Grants

AI Ethics Research at NYU

Advancing AI ethics at a leading institution for philosophy, law, and cognitive science.

As AI systems grow in power and prominence, we will have to answer questions, as a species, about how to use them ethically. These questions will be multifaceted, drawing on the philosophy of mind, law, and public policy, and cutting-edge AI research itself. That’s why Longview seed-funded Mind, Ethics, and Policy at NYU, a cross-disciplinary programme on AI ethics involving faculty in the fields of philosophy, law, cognitive science, computer science, and linguistics, among others. Their early activities have included field-building work on the legal status of AI, a public talk from leading philosopher David Chalmers on perception in large-language models, and consultation with leading AI companies.

Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford

Doing pioneering research on the intellectual foundations of doing good.

The Global Priorities Institute is the premier centre for foundational research on how to do the most good, particularly by safeguarding the future. Since they were established in 2018, the Institute has produced over 40 working papers in economics, political science, and philosophy on global prioritisation. Their summer research programmes have supported over one hundred students interested in work on global priorities, and their workshops regularly see over one hundred participants from across academia. Before the existence of the Global Priorities Institute, work on how to do the most good was not regarded as a serious academic enterprise — thanks to the institute’s work, it now is.

Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research

Fostering scholarship on crucial considerations.

The Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research is a nonprofit research organisation headed by William MacAskill, author of the New York Times bestseller What We Owe the Future. Forethought promotes the study of how our actions affect the long-term future, working on fundamental questions about the relative probabilities of different extinction risks and what we can do to mitigate them. They also run a fellowship programme for top PhD students in philosophy and economics and operationally support the Global Priorities Institute.