Game(s) that help with x-risk conceptual preparation

Sydney, Australia

Expand the availability of an executive education game that helps people realise how alien AI-made decisions are.

Project Details

At the moment, they are a bit exclusive, as they only get used in consulting engagements for senior staff in Asia. They aren't closed source or proprietary, but they aren't particularly accessible.

What I'd like funding for is to make SignalStorm more available to the wider public and more widely used. Specifically:

I'd like to play test SignalStorm with a wider audience (outside of APAC executives) and make sure that (a) it is still enjoyable outside of its original context (b) that the right message gets communicated. (I'll do some kind of pre- and post- survey or some other metric so that we can see that it works, write up a report on it.)
I suspect this will highlight some problems, probably around game instructions, game accessibility, audience connection and so on. (It has only ever been played with me in the room facilitating it.) I will fix whatever problems we find.
I want to bring the price down for the physical cards (which I can do if I bulk order a bit: the fixed costs for a print run are high and the varying costs are extremely low -currently one-off print runs are eye-wateringly expensive). This isn't a must-have, since it can be played online only, but the augmented reality version is much more memorable and powerful, so it's what I'd like to see used.
It is currently Japanese-English bilingual; it would be good to have some other languages available as well.

Theory of Impact

There are two aspects to this.

Firstly, education and outreach and nudging the Overton window a little.

SignalStorm (and other complementary games) are primarily for people outside of the x-risk community to get them just a little more receptive to x-risk ideas.

Right now, the vast majority of people have think of AI as something that helps them write LinkedIn posts or to cheat on schoolwork and don't really see how x-risk is a real thing. SignalStorm lets people explore in a non-threatening way the ideas that (a) with sophisticated AI tools, we might make decisions differently (b) that our economy might speed up in ways that are hard to keep pace with (c) AI can't be governed reliably top-down even in a business (even today) (d) traditionally stable institutions are changing rapidly.

Once those ideas are internalised, I have found it becomes much easier for people to think about questions like "is sharing the planet with an alien intelligence smarter than us a bad idea?" and "we're rapidly running up an exponential curve and no-one is in control." (I often spontaneously get asked these kinds of questions and observations after I run a session.) Secondly, having employees play SignalStorm seems to be good at making organisations better prepared for the consequences of more sophisticated AI. I can't really quantify it, but it seems to be true. If this means that companies can respond a little bit faster to a rapidly changing AI landscape that might be helpful if we end up in a slow takeoff scenario.

People

Greg Baker

Team Member

Funding Details

Start Date: Feb 2, 2026
End Date: -
Expected Duration: -
Funding Raised to Date: -
Annual Budget: -
Monthly Burn Rate: -
Current Runway: -
Funding Goal: -
Funding Stage: -
Fiscal Sponsor: -

Grants Received– no grants recorded

Add grant

Funding Asks

grantmaking.ai Launch Round

Applied

Minimum

$10,000

Ideal

$25,000

What this ask is

SignalStorm is an executive education mixed-media game that makes people think about second order effects of AI. Players taking turns making decisions by delegating to ChatGPT, going by gut feel, or a sophisticated AI-powered analysis. It subtly teaches a few ideas: that AI thinking is very alien; that introducing AI to an organisational decision can leave humans responsible but powerless; that AI can operate at speeds that leave humans in a blur. I use this in sessions with executives in larger organisations. (Where it gets described as "thought provoking", "profound" and "eye-opening".)

At the moment, they are a bit exclusive, as they only get used in consulting engagements for senior staff in Asia. They aren't closed source or proprietary, but they aren't particularly accessible.

What I'd like funding for is to make SignalStorm more available to the wider public and more widely used. Specifically:

I'd like to play test SignalStorm with a wider audience (outside of APAC executives) and make sure that (a) it is still enjoyable outside of its original context (b) that the right message gets communicated. (I'll do some kind of pre- and post- survey or some other metric so that we can see that it works, write up a report on it.)
I suspect this will highlight some problems, probably around game instructions, game accessibility, audience connection and so on. (It has only ever been played with me in the room facilitating it.) I will fix whatever problems we find.
I want to bring the price down for the physical cards (which I can do if I bulk order a bit: the fixed costs for a print run are high and the varying costs are extremely low -currently one-off print runs are eye-wateringly expensive). This isn't a must-have, since it can be played online only, but the augmented reality version is much more memorable and powerful, so it's what I'd like to see used.
It is currently Japanese-English bilingual; it would be good to have some other languages available as well.

How the money will be spent

Minimum funding will get three non-executive SignalStorm play-tests plus corrections, an analysis of pre-/post- responses, a reduced deck cost and an evaluation report.

Ideal funding would let me have Chinese, Korean, Spanish and Arabic translations created. I could also do some work on a few other complementary games: RoleShock (about job changes), Friday4pm (about how AI is very hard to govern) or Studium (changes to university and education).

Discussion

No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts.