AI Alignment Awards

AI Alignment Awards is a prize program launched in November 2022 to advance technical AI alignment research through open research contests. It is structured as a project of Players Philanthropy Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity that provides fiscal sponsorship, and is funded by Open Philanthropy. The program's stated goals are to raise awareness of the AI alignment problem, to attract and identify people who might be good fits for alignment research but who haven't yet worked in the field, and to generate useful research progress on important open problems. Contests are open to anyone, including those without prior AI safety experience, and teams of up to four people are permitted. The first round of contests, which ran from November 22, 2022 through May 1, 2023, focused on two problems. The Goal Misgeneralization contest asked how to prevent or detect the failure mode described in the 2022 paper 'Goal Misgeneralization in Deep Reinforcement Learning,' where a reinforcement learning agent retains its capabilities out-of-distribution but pursues the wrong goal. The Corrigibility (Shutdown Problem) contest asked how to design AI systems that remain open to being shut down, based on challenges identified in the 2015 paper 'Corrigibility.' The advertised prize pool was up to $250,000 across the two contests, with individual prizes expected to range from $1,000 to $20,000, and higher awards possible for exceptional submissions. Especially promising participants could also be offered additional research funding, fellowships, and workshop invitations. The contest received 118 submissions total. Of these, 5 received honorary mention prizes of $1,000 each, and 7 received final prizes ranging from $5,000 to $16,000. Judges and advisors included John Wentworth, Richard Ngo, Nate Soares, Amy Labenz, Lauro Langosco, and Ajeya Cotra. Open Philanthropy made a grant to AI Alignment Awards specifically for the Shutdown Problem Contest. As of early 2026, the contest website indicates submissions are closed and no new contest rounds have been announced publicly.