January Newsletter: Superintelligence & Hawaii False Alarm

Dear friends,

This month marks the release of Superintelligence, a special issue of the journal Informatica co-edited by GCRI’s Matthijs Maas and Roman Yampolskiy along with Ryan Carey and Nell Watson. It contains an interesting mix of papers on AI risk. One of the papers is “Modeling and Interpreting Expert Disagreement About Artificial Superintelligence”, co-authored by Yampolskiy, Tony Barrett, and myself. This paper applies our ASI-PATH risk model to an ongoing debate between two leading AI risk experts, Nick Bostrom and Ben Goertzel. It shows how risk analysis can capture …

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October Newsletter: How To Reduce Risk

Dear friends,

As we speak, a group of researchers is meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden on the theme of existential risk. I joined it earlier in September. My commendations to Olle Häggström and Anders Sandberg for hosting an excellent event.

My talk in Gothenburg focused on how to find the best opportunities to reduce risk. The best opportunities are often a few steps removed from academic risk and policy analysis. For example, there is a large research literature on climate change policy, much of which factors in catastrophic risk. However, the …

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Towards an Integrated Assessment of Global Catastrophic Risk

View the paper “Towards an Integrated Assessment of Global Catastrophic Risk” 

Integrated assessment is an analysis of a topic that integrates multiple lines of research. Integrated assessments are thus inherently interdisciplinary. They are generally oriented toward practical problems, often in the context of public policy, and frequently concern topics in science and technology. This paper presents a concept for and some initial work towards an integrated assessment of global catastrophic risk (GCR). Generally speaking, GCR is the risk of significant harm to global human civilization. More …

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July Newsletter: Summer Talks and Presentations

Integrated Assessment

GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum gave a talk on “Integrated Assessment of Global Catastrophic Risk and Artificial Intelligence” at the Cambridge University Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) on June 28. Dr. Baum will also participate in a Tech2025 workshop on future AI risk on July 11 in New York City.

GCRI Director of Research Tony Barrett gave a talk on integrated assessment, nuclear war, AI, and risk reduction opportunities at an Effective Altruism DC event on global catastrophic risks on June 17.

Artificial Intelligence

GCRI Associate …

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February Newsletter: New Directions For GCRI

Dear friends,

I am delighted to announce important changes in GCRI’s identity and direction. GCRI is now just over three years old. In these years we have learned a lot about how we can best contribute to the issue of global catastrophic risk. Initially, GCRI aimed to lead a large global catastrophic risk community while also performing original research. This aim is captured in GCRI’s original mission statement, to help mobilize the world’s intellectual and professional resources to meet humanity’s gravest threats.

Our community building has been …

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