January Newsletter: GCRI Is Hiring + Call For Advisees/Collaborators

Dear friends,

I am delighted to announce that GCRI is currently hiring for the position of Junior Research Assistant and Project Manager. This is a great opportunity for someone seeking to make an impact and advance their career in global catastrophic risk. Additionally, GCRI has recently launched a new advising and collaboration program for people at all career points interested in our active AI projects. Please see below for details of both of these items. They are both made possible by a generous recent donation from …

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November Newsletter: A Year of Growth

Dear friends,

2019 has been a year of growth for GCRI. One year ago, we described a turning point for the organization and announced our goal of scaling up to increase our impact on global catastrophic risk. Over the past year, we have made considerable progress toward this goal. We have expanded our team, published work in top journals such as Science and Risk Analysis, and hosted a tremendously successful advising and collaboration program in support of talented people around the world. All this and more …

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Lessons for Artificial Intelligence from Other Global Risks

View the paper “Lessons for Artificial Intelligence from Other Global Risks”

It has become clear in recent years that AI poses important global risks. The study of AI risk is relatively new, but it can potentially learn a lot from the study of similar, better-studied risks. GCRI’s new paper applies to the study of AI risk lessons from four other risks: biotechnology, nuclear weapons, global warming, and asteroids. The paper is co-authored by GCRI’s Seth Baum, Robert de Neufville, and Tony Barrett, along with GCRI Senior …

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GCRI Session at the 2019 Society for Risk Analysis Meeting

GCRI is hosting a session on Global Catastrophic Risks at the 2019 meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) in Arlington, VA. SRA is the leading professional society for all types of risk. SRA brings together researchers from many disciplines as well as professionals from government, industry, nonprofits, and other sectors.

GCRI Director of Research Tony Barrett is chairing the session. It will feature talks by GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum, GCRI Special Advisor for Government Affairs Jared Brown, GCRI Senior Advisor Gary Ackerman, University …

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July Newsletter: Asteroid-Nuclear Risk Analysis

Dear friends,

One reason it is important to analyze the global catastrophic risks quantitatively is that some decisions involve tradeoffs between them. An action may reduce one risk while increasing another. It’s important to know whether the decrease in the one risk is large enough to offset the increase in the other.

This month, we announce a new paper that presents a detailed analysis of one such decision: the use of nuclear explosives to deflect Earthbound asteroids away. Nuclear deflection is an option under active consideration by …

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April Newsletter: Nuclear War Impacts

Dear friends,

This month we are announcing a new paper, “A Model for the Impacts of Nuclear War”, co-authored by Tony Barrett and myself. The paper presents a detailed and comprehensive accounting of the many ways that nuclear war can harm human beings and human society. It is a counterpart to the paper we announced last month, “A Model for the Probability of Nuclear War”.

The model has five main branches corresponding to the five main types of impacts of nuclear weapon detonations: thermal radiation, blast, ionizing …

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March Newsletter: Nuclear War Probability

Dear friends,

This month we are announcing a new paper, “A Model for the Probability of Nuclear War”, co-authored by Robert de Neufville, Tony Barrett, and myself. The paper presents the most detailed accounting of the probability of nuclear war yet available.

The core of the paper is a model covering 14 scenarios for how nuclear war could occur. In 6 scenarios, a state intentionally starts nuclear war. In the other 8, a state mistakenly believes it is under nuclear attack by another state and starts nuclear …

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February Newsletter: Military AI – The View From DC

Dear friends,

This past month, GCRI has participated in two exclusive, invitation-only events in Washington, DC, discussing military and international security applications of artificial intelligence. First, GCRI Director of Research Tony Barrett attended a workshop hosted by the AI group at the think tank Center for a New American Security. Then I gave a talk on AI at a workshop on strategic stability hosted by the Federation of American Scientists.

These two events show that the DC international security community is quite interested in AI and its …

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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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December Newsletter: Year in Review

Dear friends,

It has been another productive year for GCRI. Though we have a limited budget, we’ve made major contributions to global catastrophic risk research. Here are some highlights:

* GCRI hosted its largest-ever series of symposia on global catastrophic risk at the 2017 Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) conference, prompting SRA to encourage us to lead the formation of an official global catastrophic risk group within SRA.

* GCRI affiliates presented at numerous other events throughout the year, including dedicated catastrophic risk events at UCLA and Gothenburg.

* …

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