Letter from the Executive Director

GCRI ends 2024 with our smallest team ever, but it’s not for lack of risks in the world. The war in Ukraine rages on, and tensions among nuclear-armed states are far from resolved. H5N1 influenza has spread widely among birds, with some human cases reported. Climate change continues to worsen, causing an array of harms. AI technology has proliferated, prompting highly divergent reactions among experts and observers. Those of us concerned about global catastrophic risk certainly have our work cut out …

In September, 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, 2022, and 2023 Advising and Collaboration Programs.

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 need to do is to send us a short email expressing …

View the paper “Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Global Catastrophic Risk”

Is climate change a global catastrophic risk? Warming temperatures are already causing a variety harms around the world, some quite severe, and they project to worsen as temperatures increase. However, despite the massive body of research on climate change, the potential for extreme global harms remains highly uncertain and controversial. This paper addresses the question by examining the theoretical definition of global catastrophic risk and by comparing climate change to another severe global risk, nuclear winter. …

View the paper “On the Intrinsic Value of Diversity”

Diversity is an important ethical concept. It’s also relevant to global catastrophic risk in at least two ways: the risk of catastrophic biodiversity loss and the need for diversity among people working on global catastrophic risk. It’s additionally relevant to scenarios involving extreme good, such as in well-designed advanced AI. However, the ethics of diversity has been remarkably understudied. To help address the full range of issues involving diversity, this paper presents a foundational study of the …

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 …

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 …

In May, 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, and 2021 Advising and Collaboration Programs. The 2022 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 need …