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New Global Challenges Foundation Projects

by | 14 September 2015

By Seth Baum

By Seth Baum

GCRI has two new funded projects with the Global Challenges Foundation, a philanthropic foundation based in Stockholm.

The first project is a quarterly report of everything going on in the world of global catastrophic risks. The reports will be an expanded version of our monthly news summaries, with some new features and an emphasis on work going on around the world to reduce the risks.

The second project is a risk analysis of nuclear war. Prior GCRI nuclear war research modeled the probability of specific nuclear war scenarios and discussed some of the potential impacts, especially nuclear winter. This project will have us model the entire risk, looking at all scenarios and all impacts.

Author

<a href="https://threeatetwo.com/website_79380c4c/author/seth-baum/" target="_self">Seth Baum</a>

Seth Baum

Recent Publications

Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Global Catastrophic Risk

Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Global Catastrophic Risk

by | 30 July 2024

Is climate change a global catastrophic risk? This paper, published in the journal Futures, addresses the question by examining the definition of global catastrophic risk and by comparing climate change to another severe global risk, nuclear winter. The paper concludes that yes, climate change is a global catastrophic risk, and potentially a significant one.

Assessing the Risk of Takeover Catastrophe from Large Language Models

Assessing the Risk of Takeover Catastrophe from Large Language Models

by | 3 July 2024

For over 50 years, experts have worried about the risk of AI taking over the world and killing everyone. The concern had always been about hypothetical future AI systems—until recent LLMs emerged. This paper, published in the journal Risk Analysis, assesses how close LLMs are to having the capabilities needed to cause takeover catastrophe.

On the Intrinsic Value of Diversity

On the Intrinsic Value of Diversity

by , | 17 June 2024

Diversity is a major ethics concept, but it is remarkably understudied. This paper, published in the journal Inquiry, presents a foundational study of the ethics of diversity. It adapts ideas about biodiversity and sociodiversity to the overall category of diversity. It also presents three new thought experiments, with implications for AI ethics.

Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Global Catastrophic Risk

Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Global Catastrophic Risk

by | 30 July 2024

Is climate change a global catastrophic risk? This paper, published in the journal Futures, addresses the question by examining the definition of global catastrophic risk and by comparing climate change to another severe global risk, nuclear winter. The paper concludes that yes, climate change is a global catastrophic risk, and potentially a significant one.

Assessing the Risk of Takeover Catastrophe from Large Language Models

Assessing the Risk of Takeover Catastrophe from Large Language Models

by | 3 July 2024

For over 50 years, experts have worried about the risk of AI taking over the world and killing everyone. The concern had always been about hypothetical future AI systems—until recent LLMs emerged. This paper, published in the journal Risk Analysis, assesses how close LLMs are to having the capabilities needed to cause takeover catastrophe.

On the Intrinsic Value of Diversity

On the Intrinsic Value of Diversity

by , | 17 June 2024

Diversity is a major ethics concept, but it is remarkably understudied. This paper, published in the journal Inquiry, presents a foundational study of the ethics of diversity. It adapts ideas about biodiversity and sociodiversity to the overall category of diversity. It also presents three new thought experiments, with implications for AI ethics.