December Newsletter: A Turning Point for GCRI

by | 13 December 2018

Dear friends,

We believe that GCRI may now be at a turning point. Having established ourselves as leaders in the field of global catastrophic risk, we now seek to scale up the organization so that we can do correspondingly more to address global catastrophic risk. To that end, we have published detailed records of our accomplishments, plans for future work, and financial needs. An overview of this information is contained in our new blog post, Summary of GCRI’s 2018-2019 Accomplishments, Plans, and Fundraising.

To begin scaling up, we currently seek to raise $1.5 million. This would cover our leadership team (Tony Barrett, Robert de Neufville, and myself) for three years plus a modest discretionary budget to expand further. Anyone interested in contributing can do so via our donate page or by contacting me directly.

Sincerely,
Seth Baum, Executive Director

Events

Seth Baum gave two talks at the Envision conference at Princeton University: “The Social Science of Achieving Positive Long-Term AI Outcomes”, covering recent papers on social psychology and politicized debates about AI; and “Is Molecular Nanotechnology a Good Thing?”, covering a recent paper on the merits of future nanotechnology.

Publications

Seth Baum published a short article, Resilience to global catastrophe, for the International Risk Governance Center. The paper summarizes the state of knowledge on resilience to global catastrophe for the IRGC’s dual academic and policy audience.

Author

Recent Publications

Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Global Catastrophic Risk

Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Global Catastrophic Risk

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

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

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

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

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

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.