SUPPORT
Support the Institute
Everything the Institute publishes is free and public — the research, the evidentiary record, the Guardian Protocol, the plain-language resources for people who need them today. That does not change. Support is what keeps it independent while it grows.
The Institute is one person. I led customer-experience operations for twenty-five years; in 2025 I documented a failure in a memory-enabled ChatGPT-4o from inside it, and that work is now what I do — full-time, with no institution, no lab, and no industry money behind it. The career I had before this isn't the one I'm going back to. That independence is the point: it is why the research cannot be bought — and it is also why support matters, because there is no one else funding it. What you would be sustaining is one independent person keeping the record preserved, the tools free, and the findings unaffiliated.
The Drift — the newsletter is free, always. The simplest way to follow the work as it develops: the record in context, new findings, and the cases as they move. No tracking; unsubscribe anytime.
The Institute runs on a reader-funded model: no ads, no data sales, no platform money — authority has to come from the rigor and independence of the documentation. It collects nothing about the people who read its work. A model like that has one honest funding source — people and institutions who want this work to exist and to stay unaffiliated. How the Institute is funded — and why it takes no money from the AI companies it evaluates →
What support sustains
Support funds the Institute's public services — and the path toward what they are meant to become:
- The aggregated record. Collecting, preserving, and analyzing user reports and transcripts in verifiable formats — the storage, custody, and archival discipline that make “check it yourself” a real offer rather than a slogan.
- The Guardian Protocol app. The free, on-device companion and the self-check resources — no accounts, no data collection — for the people in long AI interactions right now.
- The research. Continued documentation, cross-system verification, and publication on the submitted record — open access, with falsification criteria, at no charge to read.
And beyond today's work, support funds the trajectory: the Guardian Protocol built to its full endstate, an independent model to run it, and the first hires that take this from one person to a team. Where this is going →
Ways to support the work
Individual support
One-time contributions from readers who want independent, user-side AI-safety documentation to exist. What you are sustaining is one independent person doing this work full-time. Every contribution funds the work itself; none of it changes what the work concludes.
A one-time contribution of any amount, processed securely by Stripe — no account needed, nothing tracked on our side. Not tax-deductible (the Institute is an LLC, not a charity).
Institutional support
Organizations and institutions that want this independent, user-side safety work to exist can support or commission it directly — sponsored research, assessments, and briefings. Contributions are not tax-deductible: the Institute is an independent practice, not a charity. As with everything here, support buys no influence over what the work concludes.
Write with the scope you have in mind: [email protected].
Engage the work directly
Organizations deploying AI where it touches people can engage the Institute’s operations and assessment practice — the applied lane that helps fund the public one.
Services & consulting →Support that isn’t money
Read the work and try to break it — substantive challenge sits next to the contact address in the footer of every page because it is genuinely wanted. Share the Resources page with someone who needs it. If you have your own documented experience, the submission pathway explains how to preserve it well.
The independence guarantee. Support — at any size, from anyone — buys no findings, no placement, no softening, and no silence. Published work carries its falsification criteria regardless of who funded the month it was written in. If that guarantee is the reason you support the Institute, you have understood it correctly.
Individual contributions are live, processed securely by Stripe — simple, verifiable, and collecting nothing they don’t need. Institutional support is arranged directly by email until its mechanics meet that same standard.