In May, GCRI put out an open call for people interested in seeking our advice and/or collaborating with us on projects. This was a new initiative for us, enabled by funding we received last year. It was also a bit of an experiment: we did not know how much interest there would be, or how constructive it would be either for the advisees/collaborators or for us.
We are quite happy with how the advising/collaboration program turned out. We received inquiries from many talented people from around the world. In the ensuing conversations, we provided guidance to a lot of people who are relatively new to the field of global catastrophic risk. In turn, many of them gave us valuable input on our other work or made valuable contributions to it. Additionally, the program also provided a glimpse of the potential value of a scaled-up GCRI. The program was such a success that we plan to make it a permanent feature of GCRI.
Our program has shown that there is significant unmet demand for advising and collaboration on global catastrophic risk, and that GCRI is well-positioned to meet the demand. GCRI can meet that demand by providing advanced and highly flexible support to a wide range of people pursuing careers in global catastrophic risk. The other opportunities that are currently available to people interested in global catastrophic risk tend to be relatively introductory (like the excellent career advising provided by the organization 80,000 Hours) or concentrated in specific locations (like the Research Scholars Programme of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University). As a leading research institute designed for remote collaboration, GCRI is naturally positioned to meet the needs of people from outside geographic hubs like Oxford who are looking to take the next step.
GCRI’s deep interdisciplinary expertise enabled us to provide customized guidance for people with a wide range of backgrounds and at varying career points. Our advising sessions covered topics that included economic growth theory, international security, nanotechnology, political theory, risk analysis, science & technology studies, social psychology, and more. We provided pointers to existing literature, introductions to other experts in our networks, recommendations about job and grad school options, and ideas for specific projects. In a few cases, we partnered with people on specific projects.
GCRI’s flexible institutional structure enabled us to provide support tailored to people’s needs. Our geographic flexibility was especially valuable. I am based in New York, so I led most of the calls with people in Europe, while Robert de Neufville, who is based in Honolulu, led most of the calls with people in the Asia-Pacific Region, and we each led some of the calls with people in the Americas. Many of the people we spoke with are based in places where there are few other people interested in global catastrophic risk. Many of them told us they sincerely appreciated the chance to connect with like-minded people.
For example, one senior scholar from New Zealand woke up at 3:00 a.m. local time to participate in a group call because it was a rare opportunity for him to speak with people with similar interests. A junior researcher at a major university in Singapore told us that he had felt isolated from the global catastrophic risk community because, in spite of Singapore’s being one of the most hyperconnected cities in the world, it does not have a significant global catastrophic risk community of its own. Another person called the program “an amazing resource for connecting with people who are also interested in mitigating catastrophic risks”.
Another remarkable aspect of the program was how little it cost. The only significant expense was the cost of the time it took us to manage the program. Most of the program was conducted using a $150 subscription to a professional account on the Zoom phone/VOIP platform. We also incurred a few smaller expenses for the handful of in-person meetings we held with people who happened to be in the same city as one of us. This was radically less expensive than dedicated travel for in-person meetings would have been. It also saved us the significant time it would have taken us to travel to meet with other people (and did not produce unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions). We don’t deny the value of in-person meetings, but we do believe remote meetings are often preferable.
Unfortunately, this year we did not have a budget for new outside collaborators. We were able to collaborate with a number of people who were willing to contribute on a volunteer basis. We took care to ensure that the contributors’ felt their time was well spent by aligning their contributions with their professional interests and supporting them in their work. However, how much we could collaborate with others was inevitably limited by our funding situation. We hope we will have the funding to compensate contributors in the future so we that together we can do even more to reduce global catastrophic risk.
Some specific program highlights:
- 76 people responded to our open call blog post.
- Respondents were based in more than 20 different countries around the world, mainly in North America and Europe. Other countries represented included Brazil, Israel, India, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji.
- Respondents ranged from undergraduates to senior professionals. The senior professionals included a Brazilian diplomat in the office of the President of the United Nations General Assembly; a visiting researcher at Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, on leave from his role as a policy adviser in Australia’s Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; a disaster response executive who has worked for NGO’s, Red Cross, the UN, governments, and universities; and a university professor who wrote a best-selling book on rebooting civilization after a global catastrophe.
- We have had substantive interactions with more than 50 people so far. We considered factors like their fit with our projects and our areas of expertise, their need for advice or to collaborate, and our assessment of their potential to contribute to global catastrophic risk reduction in deciding whom to talk to.
- Our interactions included 33 one-on-one phone or online advising sessions, three group advising sessions, and one in-person get together in New York city. We also made 27 private introductions, drawing on our professional networks to connect the people who reached out to us with people who might be able to help them or might be interested in working with them.
- In addition, we hosted five group calls to discuss specific GCR topics. These calls included a mix of junior advice seekers and senior colleagues, some of whom came from our existing networks and not from the advising/collaboration program. The calls served to discuss the latest research, connect people working on similar topics, foster cutting-edge discussion, and advise people interested in doing further research. Twenty-six people participated in the calls, including 5 GCRI affiliates, 7 outside colleagues, and 14 people who connected with us as part of our call for advisees and collaborators.
CORRECTION: GCRI did 33 one-on-one advising sessions, not 40. We regret the error in the original post.
