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 interest in contributing more to public conversations about global catastrophic risk. We have continued to pursue this theme in 2023, in particular by exploring how to contribute to public conversations in a constructive and sustainable fashion. This has been an insightful process, leaving us with a considerably more sophisticated understanding of our options in the public sphere than we had one year ago. We hope to have more to share on this in the new year.
This post summarizes what GCRI accomplished in 2023 and our plans for 2024. Previous Annual Reports can be found here.
Jump to:
2023 Accomplishments:
* Research
* Outreach
* Community Support
* Organization Development
2024 Plans:
* Research
* Outreach
* Community Support
* Organization Development
GCRI has two new publications to report:
All-hazards policy for global catastrophic risk, a GCRI technical report. This report adapts the concept of all-hazards policy for the governance of global catastrophic risk. All-hazards policy addresses multiple hazards at one time, taking advantage of synergies between measures to address different hazards.
Public health and nuclear winter: Addressing a catastrophic threat, in Journal of Public Health Policy. This paper argues that nuclear winter should be regarded as a major global public health threat. It outlines a public health research and policy agenda for understanding and mitigating the threat.
GCRI has conducted a variety of outreach activities over the past year.
First, we have supported outreach to policymakers and related bodies. Increasingly, this outreach is being conducted by dedicated policy advocacy organizations; GCRI supports them by providing feedback and guidance on policy concepts.
Second, we have done some outreach to the public. This includes two commentary articles written for public media outlets, both on issues of urban design and climate change in the New York City metropolitan area:
Even with electric vehicles, an expanded Turnpike Extension would be bad for the environment, in The Jersey Journal.
New York’s housing plans must address affordability-& climate change, in City Limits.
GCRI also has 2 new presentations to report this year:
Introduction to global catastrophic risk, at a symposium hosted by Scholars for Society.
Preventing global catastrophe: Strategy and careers, a talk to the group Yale Effective Altruism.
As senior members of a growing field, GCRI is active in supporting the broader community of people and organizations working on global catastrophic risk.
Our fifth annual Advising and Collaboration Program went well. We spoke with 43 people from around the world, providing them with feedback and guidance on how they can get more involved in global catastrophic risk. We also made 54 introductions between program participants and people in our wider professional networks, providing them with further leads for getting more involved.
Our third annual Fellowship Program features three Fellows. One of them is collaborating with GCRI on an AI governance research project. The other two are collaborating with GCRI on advancing the field of global catastrophic risk around the world through their respective organizations, the ILINA Program in Africa and RCG in the Spanish-speaking world.
In addition to our engagement with the ILINA Program and RCG, GCRI has also been in conversation with people from other regions of the world. The aim of this work is to support a more geographically diverse field of global catastrophic risk. We have been in contact with people in India, southeast Asia, Japan, and the Muslim world, in addition to our usual contacts in North America and Europe, which is where the field has been historically concentrated.
Finally, we have published two formal statements in support of a better field of global catastrophic risk. First, the GCRI Statement on the Demographic Diversity of the GCRI Team, January 2023 addresses the fact that, following the departures of McKenna Fitzgerald and Andrea Owe, the GCRI team had limited demographic diversity. The statement expresses regret about this lack of diversity and commits GCRI to advancing demographic diversity in the field—a commitment that is seen in the activities described above. Second, the GCRI Statement on Race and Intelligence addresses the very harmful and scientifically dubious idea of a genetic basis of racial differences in intelligence. It was prompted by remarks on the topic made by Nick Bostrom, a senior scholar of global catastrophic risk. The statement explains the problems with Bostrom’s remarks and outlines how the field can do better.
Throughout 2023, GCRI’s primary organization development activity has been an in-depth inquiry into opportunities for public outreach, as explained above.
In 2024, we anticipate a dual focus on public outreach and supporting a more global field of global catastrophic risk. These two activities are interconnected: we wish to engage with publics around the world and help them to get more involved in addressing global catastrophic risk.
Growth in the field of global catastrophic risk has largely been for research. For this reason, there is less of a need for GCRI to focus on research and more of a role for us in other areas, especially public outreach. Nonetheless, we expect to continue to conduct some research as opportunities arise.
In 2024, we plan to start executing some of the public outreach concepts that we have been developing over the past year. We expect that this will be a primary focus for us in the coming year and beyond. We also plan to remain involved in policy outreach, especially by supporting other organizations conducting policy outreach on global catastrophic risk to governments around the world.
We expect that our community support will continue in 2024 and potentially expand in conjunction with our public outreach activities. We plan to conduct new rounds of our Advising and Collaboration Program and Fellowship Program and to continue supporting a more global field of global catastrophic risk in partnership with other organizations. We hope that our public outreach will attract additional people to the field. Finally, we will continue to provide leadership to the field, such as via our official statements.
Our organization development work is currently focused primarily on developing our approach to public outreach. This includes the development of capabilities and funding models for the public outreach. In 2023, we have made a lot of progress on these matters. In 2024, we expect that these efforts will start to bear fruit.
We would be grateful for any financial support. Prospective contributors can visit our donate page or contact Seth Baum at seth [at] gcrinstitute.org.
In this year of transition for GCRI, we hope to have positioned ourselves for success in 2024 and beyond.
