November Newsletter: A Year of Growth

Post Date November 26, 2019
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Category newsletter

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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2019 Annual Report

Post Date November 26, 2019
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Category discussion, planning

2019 has been a year of growth for GCRI. We have made good progress toward our goal, announced last year, of scaling up the organization so we can do more to reduce global catastrophic risk. We have also completed work on ongoing global catastrophic risk projects. We are especially happy with the advising and collaboration program we ran this year, through which we helped many people advance their work on global catastrophic risk while demonstrating how GCRI can operate at a larger scale.

Last year, we …

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Lessons for Artificial Intelligence from Other Global Risks

Post Date November 21, 2019
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Category announcement, articles, artificial intelligence

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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My Experience With The GCRI Advising/Collaboration Program: A Junior Collaborator From Singapore

Post Date November 20, 2019
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Category outreach

I am a recent college graduate working on AI policy with an emphasis on global catastrophic risk. This past April, I moved back to my home country, Singapore, to start as a Research Associate at the Centre for AI and Data Governance at Singapore Management University. I first got in touch with GCRI during my time at university, and reconnected over the summer as part of its advising/collaboration program.

The Centre for AI and Data Governance is
fairly new. It mainly focuses on scholarship of Singapore law …

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Summary of 2019 Advising and Collaboration Program

Post Date November 18, 2019
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Category outreach

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 …

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September 2019 Newsletter

Post Date September 30, 2019
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Category newsletter

Survival and Flourishing Fund Grant

GCRI has been awarded a $60,000 grant from the Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF), a new donor-advised fund held at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. SFF’s goal is “to bring financial support to organizations working to improve humanity’s long-term prospects for survival and flourishing”. GCRI is grateful for SFF’s support of our work.

Risk and Decision Analysis

GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum has an article on “The Challenge of Analyzing Global Catastrophic Risks” in the July issue of Decision Analysis Today. The article describes …

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Review of End Times in Science

Post Date September 23, 2019
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Read Seth Baum’s review of End Times.

GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum recently reviewed Bryan Walsh’s new book End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World for Science. Dr. Baum calls End Times is “a highly readable account of the field of global catastrophic risk as it is currently constituted”. The book specifically covers Earth-asteroid collision, volcano eruption, nuclear war, global warming, disease outbreaks, biotechnology, and various threats from artificial and extraterrestrial intelligence. Dr. Baum writes that the book raises two key questions …

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The Challenge of Analyzing Global Catastrophic Risks

Post Date July 29, 2019
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Category announcement, articles, risk analysis

View the paper “The Challenge of Analyzing Global Catastrophic Risks”

The quantification of global catastrophic risks in terms of their probabilities and severities is difficult, but it is important for many decisions. Likewise, the fields of risk and decision analysis have much to offer the study of global catastrophic risk. This short paper summarizes the challenge of quantitatively analyzing global catastrophic risks. I was invited by the Decision Analysis Society to write this for their publication Decision Analysis Today.

As the paper explains, the quantification of global …

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GCRI Session at the 2019 Society for Risk Analysis Meeting

Post Date July 22, 2019
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Category announcement, risk analysis

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

Post Date July 16, 2019
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Category newsletter

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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