You have $1,000 and a hoverboard. At every stop, two people ask for the same $100. Only one of them can have it.
Why play: see what guides your giving when you cannot help everyone. If you choose to share, your gifts join Sanctity’s record of how people want aid money spent. Ten gifts, three cities, about eight minutes. Figures are illustrative and no money moves.
◀▶ Two buttons play the whole game: left and right, or tap. Ride the city, or go rapid fire.
Ten gifts are a small sample. Play again and the name may change; the rules you held to should not.
choices the game predicted right
times you looked at the proof before giving
average time to decide
What mattered to you
What you said, and what you did
You said
Your choices say
Where your $1,000 went
Your $1 million city budget
Give for real
Your hardest call
Send it to a friend with the left button. They get the exact same choice, then see what you picked.
Press and hold the card to save it.
Every gift is a small vote on how aid money should be spent. Sanctity gathers the votes people choose to share, so that when real money has to be divided, there is a record of what the public chooses, trade-offs included. Your part:
Figures are illustrative. No money moves. The profile names and exchange rates come from your ten choices and a small model, not from a published study.
A Sanctity AI Lab experiment.
How The Charity Game works
You start with $1,000 in ten gifts of $100. At each stop, two people ask for the same $100 and you choose one. The other goes without, this time. There is no right answer, only yours.
Why it exists: decisions about aid money are usually made by a handful of people, or more and more by software. The Charity Game gathers what the public would choose, trade-offs included, from the players who choose to share.
Before you ride we ask for your gender (through your rider), age band, your region of the world and how often you give, each with a prefer not to say, so the results can be checked for balance. We never ask for your name, email, ethnicity, religion or health.
Each choice changes one or two things at a time: how many people are helped, what the money is for, whether it arrives as cash, goods or a service, whether you meet the person, their age, people or animals, proof that it works, and your own family against strangers. Every option is set in a real region of the world, so the dataset can show whether where people live changes who they help.
Sometimes details are hidden. You can look first or give without looking. Both tell us something.
Every ask is a campaign with a goal and a share already raised. The share is set at random, so we can see whether people back the causes that are winning or the ones left behind.
The kiosks you pass between stops show messages in a random order, and we note which ones you rode past before each choice. Rapid fire skips the ride and takes you straight from one choice to the next, which lets us compare the two.
How the questions are picked: each ride studies three of your values closely. Family against strangers is always one; the other two are drawn at random from keeping the money, someone you met, your own region, children or older people, and people or animals. Each starts where research says most people switch: for family, about four strangers for one cousin. Keep to the value and the people on the other side double; give it up and they halve; once you have done both, the next choice lands in between. So nearly every gift is a real trade-off, and your answers close in on your own exchange rate: how many people a value is worth to you. A value you keep even at four to one is one of your rules.
Your results show your rules first, then one bar per thing you were asked, with what you actually did written underneath. A fast answer counts as a clear preference and a slow one as a close call.
The Charity Game was inspired by MyGoodness, a game about how people give from the MIT Media Lab and The Life You Can Save. Sanctity is not affiliated with either. Everything in it is our own: how the questions are picked, the model that reads your choices, the things we test (real regions and prices, who is asking, proof, funding, family, your own region) and the results you see.
Prices by region are rounded from the World Bank’s price level ratios. The world map is drawn from Natural Earth (public domain). All other figures in this game are illustrative.
Your choices stay on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
A Sanctity AI Lab experiment, made by the team behind Sanctity AI.
Paused
The city waits for you. If you step out now, this ride ends here. Gifts count only from a ride that is finished.