TL;DR:

• I am about to build an EA-University which provides systematic, scientific, digital and technological Education framed by the principles of effective Altruism.
• I aim to start it with four courses^[1]. (Foundations of AI, How to manage the digital transformation, How to work in the world of “work 4.0 / new work” and How to manage innovation in times of emerging technologies)
• I aim to get all these courses officially certified by German authorities so that they have the maximum of practical value^[1].
• My primary 3 goals are to “create” more effective altruists (EAs), provide Tools + Mindset for EAs to DO and "create” more impactful Innovators through these steps.

Intro

Thanks to the multiplying character of emerging and deep technologies like AI, CRISPR and digital networks, every decision of every human paired with them has many orders of magnitude more impact than ever before in human history. But most of the people never heard of it, nor do they have the capabilities to properly deal with this kind of leverage.

To change this I will build DI - the Digital Institute.

There you learn two things^[2]:

1. What technologies - and the possibilities based on them - are out there for everyone. Now and in the upcoming years.
2. What to do with this knowledge and possibilities, and how to find the perfect intersection between what you love to do and what helps the world the most (your “Ikigai” / "Digikai" - more about them in the following chapters). Students in the DI-courses will already start working on first projects, so they get practical experience while learning about it.

So, in one graphic, what I will build is:

Why?

As Education is the baseline for innovation and therefore one of the mightiest "forces" out there^[3] - both individually as collectively - and because we need more smart people working on really hard problems, I start building the first EA-University.

The EA-Community seems to be on the same page here. Although I could not find many places with this Idea mentioned, the sources where I found them are quite significant:

1. "...a university would include teaching and a broader range of topics and disciplines. Nonetheless, a university and MPG have substantial overlap. 
   Given that education and career choice are important aspects of EA, it might make sense to launch an entire university. ..."
2. "... educational curricula could be redesigned to pay more attention to the most important problems and most useful tools for reasoning. ..."

So I think as EA-Idea as well as a personal fit, this is a good Idea to at least try.

How does the Impact look like?

I think the Impact should look pretty straight forward:

1. More technological, effective altruistic and innovation-educated people +
2. Practical experiences of building and real-world-testing the solutions that they came up +
3. Mindset, Mental Models etc. to not be afraid of failure, start small etc. (basically a basic "Start-Up-Training" I guess)

= More people who live their best lives and helping as many people as possible through it. Enabling the DI-students to live their "scaled / digital Ikigai", the "Digikai", is kind of one of the primary goals for the education provided at DI. 

What are the specific Outcomes that I am looking for?

I want to reach ≥ 3 main-goals^[4]:

1. “Create” more effective altruists (EAs): The Digital Institute (DI) will literally train EAs. Comparabe to the Intro Fellowship, just on a much greater scale.
2. Provide Tools + Mindset for EAs to DO: Having EAs is great. Having EAs who build projects and make things happen is better. DI will provide EAs with practical experience that lowers the threshold of beginning a project and the fear of failure etc.
3. “Create” more Innovators: More EAs equipped with better tools and mindset = more brave people who follow their EA-Visions and form them into concrete solutions in the real world.

All in all, I think the key reasons for this project / that DI makes the world a better place through are:

1. More people prioritizing important causes.
2. Giving more people the tools to successfully work on these causes.
3. Build a network.
4. Enlarge the EA-Community.
5. Create some standards in highly complex topics to ease conversations.
6. Educate them for EA-critical jobs.
7. Increase the acceptance of these causes.
8. Supports / lays the foundation for the broader Mindset to deal with the current and upcoming challenges for all students.
9. Scale up the number of innovators, entrepreneurs and “change-makers” by enabling them through tools and boost their mindset to do things.
10. Help people find purpose and their place in the world, and understand a more accurate status of the world. (Instead of the “everything is doomed because the media says so-Mindset”)

Why am I qualified to do this?

• I have worked - and to a certain degree still work - as a lecturer / trainer for nearly a dozen different German education institutes with many different educational approaches for the last > 5 years. I have collected more than 200 references of former students from these courses. (With a median of 9 out of 10 points, 10 being “perfect”)
  • Because of my work experience, I know the market and have gained knowledge on the steps needed to implement my courses.
  • I additionally train leaders and CEOs from a broad range of companies in 2-4 day coachings for the last > 3 years.
• Besides that, I co-built two educational concepts and brought the last of them in front of an investor^[5].
• As I own my own consulting company for ~ 2 years now, I know how to build a company.
• In 2017, I got a similar (but smaller) project - about health education - funded by German and EU-authorities.
• I co-founded and lead a techno-optimist / part-EA political party in germany. The "Transhuman Party Germany".
• More about my knowledge about technology can be found here (German), here (German) and here (German).

What am I looking for right now?

1. Opinions and ideas on how to web EA more deeply into the whole thing: Right now, I just loosely copy the Intro Syllabus and then look at all the individual technologies from the perspective of EA.
2. Possible Co-workers / Collaborators: At least some opinions / options to throw Ideas around would be great. At best, there are some people out there who share my passion and just didn't know where to start a project like this. If so: Just write me a message, please! (Or a comment, whatever fits you more)
3. Funding: This project will cost tens of thousands of euros / dollars just to get the University as well as the courses officially certified and running. And a lot of hours as well. (Even though everything is completely digital) As the whole thing is planned to eventually get revenue in, you need to start somewhere to get the ball rolling. Right now I just finance and build everything on my own. But this won't probably work forever and/or will take forever because I always have to cross-finance everything. So if you are involved with funds, VCs etc. who could be interested, please connect them with me^[6].

What could go wrong?

I am deeply optimistic about the whole project, and it is kinda my "brain-child" for ~3 years now. But of course, there can be speed bumps. The most important ones are:

1. There will be no students interested
2. I won't get the certification and so no one will take this seriously / doubt the use of the courses / content
3. There will be "only" academics as output as in usual universities. So a lot of knowledge but not a lot of concrete solutions and innovations.
4. Something I cannot foresee right now.

What could go right?

I have already discussed the main goals of DI. But it could come even better. For example, in these forms:  

1. Foundation / Standard: With the Fellowship, the EA-Intro, the Handbook and a lot of other sources like books etc. I think EA is ready to be taught systematically now.
2. (large) Community-Building: More parts of Society get in active contact with effective Altruism.
3. Scale: If this works, it can be scaled into other countries and with a lot more courses and content. This is, in the best case, just the very starting point of something way bigger.
4. Reputation: As I specifically choose concepts that in kind of the same form already work in the "real world" outside EA I think this university can improve the view of many people about EA as a whole.
5. Something I cannot foresee right now.

Current Status

I've got / work on:

1. Curricula: ~ 80% done. As I already roughly held them as lectures for / with some institutions. Although at least fine-tuning from an EA-Point of View would be appreciated.
2. Website: ~ 90% done. Only things that are essentially missing for launch are 2-4 SEO-optimized blogposts so that the website won't look "empty" at the launch.
3. Marketing: Right now, I start with Search Engine Optimization, as I come from this field. But this will need more work the bigger the project gets.
4. Certification: I am ~5% through the mountains of paperwork to get there, but at least I have a plan now what and when to do. A lot to do but doable.
5. Funding: See the section "What am I looking for right now?"
6. Target Group: My "usual clientele" are people
   1. from age ~ 30-55,
   2. ~60% men,
   3. with a broad but at least minimal technical background
   4. who need some digital knowledge / certificate to get their next job.
   5. who pay for this education on their own (~10%-15%), get paid by their company (~10%-15%) or, the biggest chunk, get this education funded by the German government, as Germany needs more people with knowledge about the digital transformation. (~80%)

I like this "clientele" especially as it is not the "usual academics" that are (at least in my point of view) often overrepresented in EA-Space.

These are just the people that I'm usually working with and as I know ~80% of the system I think I can just get going with this^[4].

Future / planned

Of course, this is just the start of it. More faculties should follow. More lecturers as well. Maybe a R&D-Department at some point. Making this international. Etc.

But for now I just want to get going and get results. EA-oriented, "digital-fluent" innovators who want to make the world better and bring this into practice instead of writing and/or just discussing it. (Which is fine to a degree. But philosophers alone won't make the world significantly better)

Outro

I probably forgot a lot of very important points, but I just wanted to give a brief summary of this awesome project.

Please ask if you want to know more.

I will attend the EAGxBerlin in September 2022. So I would love to talk with you guys about it and maybe even make something happen together!

Cheers, and thanks for reading,

Ben

1. ^{^}

   Why these specific courses and topics for them? Because based on my experience as a trainer, these are the best intersections of technological and applicable knowledge. And in these forms I highly expect to get the whole content certified and then people can actually apply for real jobs with this knowledge. Again: DI aims to be one of the "interfaces" from the EA-Space to the rest of the world.

2. ^{^}

   This is the starting point and will in the end probably be just one "faculty". But right now I have to start somewhere, and my personal expertise lies mostly in the field of technology.

3. ^{^}

   See the fields "Education" and "Innovation & Technology" including their classification for example here.

4. ^{^}

   There is a specific timeline, the curricula, defined milestones etc. already there, but they would completely blast the scope of this post. But if you are interested, just ask me please.

5. ^{^}

   We were a two-guy-team back then. Our Concept was / is building an educational mobile game which uses the same game mechanics as popular games but to educate kids / people instead of just "killing" time for them while playing.

6. ^{^}

   I applied at the EA Infrastructure-Fund with this concept in August 2022. H/T to Philippe Rivet for his tip.