The Origin and Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Expert Survey

View the Main Report “The Origin and Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Expert Survey”

View the Methodological and Analytical Annex

Exactly how the COVID-19 pandemic began remains a topic of considerable scientific and political debate. However, the opinions expressed in the debate have thus far come from an ad hoc mix of experts and commentators who have spoken up. Therefore, a research team led by the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (GCRI) and Nemesys Insights conducted a rigorous survey of global expert opinion. The anonymous survey included …

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2023 Annual Report

2023 was a year of learning and transition for GCRI, and likewise a relatively quiet year for us. A year ago, we lost two team members, McKenna Fitzgerald and Andrea Owe, leaving the GCRI team with just its two co-founders, Seth Baum and Tony Barrett. We certainly miss the excellent contributions of our former team members. Nonetheless, in our newly streamlined situation, we have taken the opportunity to reinvest in ourselves and recalibrate the direction of our activities.

In our 2022 Annual Report, we described our …

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2023 GCRI Fellowship Program

GCRI is pleased to announce the 2023 Fellowship Program. The Fellowship Program aims to highlight exceptional collaborators GCRI had the opportunity to partner with over the course of the year.

This year, we have three 2023 Fellows. One of them is collaborating with GCRI on an innovative research project on psychological and behavioral dimensions of AI governance. The other two are collaborating from their positions in new global catastrophic risk organizations in Africa and the Spanish-speaking world. These organizations are part of a broader initiative to …

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Summary of the 2023 Advising and Collaboration Program

In August, GCRI put out an open call for people interested in seeking our advice or collaborating on projects with us. This was a continuation of our successful 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 Advising and Collaboration Programs. The 2023 Program was made possible by continued support from Gordon Irlam.

The GCRI Advising and Collaboration Program is an opportunity for anyone interested in global catastrophic risk to get more involved in the field. There is practically no barrier to entry in the program: the only thing people …

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All-Hazards Policy for Global Catastrophic Risk

View the paper “All-Hazards Policy for Global Catastrophic Risk”

There are many similarities and linkages between the global catastrophic risks, as well as synergies in measures to address them. For these and other reasons, GCRI has an active program on cross-risk evaluation & prioritization. Unfortunately, policy for global catastrophic risk often focuses on one risk at a time, failing to take advantage of the ways to address multiple global catastrophic risks concurrently. Therefore, this report develops a cross-risk, “all-hazards” approach to policy for global catastrophic risk.

The …

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August 2023 Newsletter: Call For Advisees & Collaborators

Dear friends,

GCRI’s 2023 Advising and Collaboration Program is now open. We welcome anyone who is interested in getting more involved in global catastrophic risk, or advancing your career in it. We also welcome those who would simply like to connect or reconnect. This year, we are emphasizing five themes: diversity and inclusion; AI governance; AI politics; public scholarship; and students and early-career professionals. Your interests do not need to fit within one or more these themes to participate, but it helps if they do. Please …

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Open Call for Advisees and Collaborators, August 2023

UPDATE: The open call for advisees and collaborators is now closed. Thank you to everyone who applied. However, anyone interested in seeking our advice and/or collaborating with us is still welcome to contact us as per the instructions below and we will include them in our next advisees and collaborators program.

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GCRI is currently welcoming inquiries from people who are interested in seeking our advice and/or collaborating with us as part of our fifth annual Advising and Collaboration Program. Inquiries may cover any aspect of global …

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Public Health and Nuclear Winter: Addressing a Catastrophic Threat

View the paper “Public Health and Nuclear Winter: Addressing a Catastrophic Threat”

A large nuclear war may cause severe global environmental disruption, which is commonly known as nuclear winter. The effects may be catastrophic for human health. The field of public health has substantial capacity to understand and mitigate these harms, but it has thus far done little. Therefore, this paper outlines a public health research and policy agenda to address the threat of nuclear winter. The paper is co-authored by Seth Baum of GCRI and …

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GCRI Statement on Race and Intelligence

We at GCRI oppose racism, full stop. We previously expressed this in our Statement on Racism published in June 2020 amidst protests over the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor. As that explains, racism is important in its own right and also has significant implications for global catastrophic risk. Now, a troubling new incident within the field of global catastrophic risk motivates us to comment further.

The incident involves the very harmful and scientifically dubious idea of a genetic basis of racial differences …

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GCRI Statement on the Demographic Diversity of the GCRI Team, January 2023

Over the past month, GCRI has lost two team members: Deputy Director McKenna Fitzgerald and Research Associate Andrea Owe. As a consequence, the current GCRI team consists exclusively of White males from very similar backgrounds.

We wish to state for the record that we are aware of our current lack of demographic diversity and we are not happy about it. We believe that demographic diversity is important for a multitude of reasons, including to benefit the GCRI team from the infusion of different and complementary perspectives, …

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