Hello Effective Altruism Forum,
I am Seth Baum and I will be here to answer your questions 3 March 2015, 7-9 PM US ET (New York time). You can post questions in this thread in the meantime. Here is some more background:
I am Executive Director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (GCRI). I co-founded GCRI in 2011 with Tony Barrett. GCRI is an independent, nonprofit think tank studying major risks to the survival of human civilization. We develop practical, effective ways to reduce the risks.
There is often some confusion among effective altruists about how GCRI uses the term “global catastrophic risk”. The bottom line is that we focus on risk of catastrophes that could cause major permanent harm. This is similar to some use of “existential risk”. You can read more about that here.
GCRI just announced major changes to GCRI’s identity and direction. We are focusing increasingly on in-house research oriented towards assessing the best ways of reducing the risks. This is at the heart of our new flagship integrated assessment project, which puts all the gcrs into one study to learn the best risk reduction opportunities.
If you’d like to stay up to date on GCRI, you can sign up for our monthly email newsletter. You can also support GCRI by donating.
And GCRI is not active on social media, but you can follow me on Twitter.
I am excited to have this chance to speak with the online effective altruism community. I was involved in the online utilitarianism community around 2006-2007 via my Felicifia blog. I’m really impressed with how the community has grown. A lot of people have put a lot of work into this. Thanks go in particular to Ryan Carey for setting up today’s AMA and for doing so much more.
There are also a few things I’m hoping to learn from you:
First, I am considering a research project on what motivates people to take on major global issues and/or to act on altruistic principles more generally. I would be interested in any resources you know of about this. It could be research on altruism/global issues in general or research on what motivates people to pursue effective altruism.
Second, I am interested in what you think are major open questions in gcr/xrisk. Are you facing decisions to get involved in gcr/xrisk, or to take certain actions to reduce the risks? For these decisions, is there information that would help you figure out what to do? Your answers here can help inform the directions GCRI pursues for its research. We aspire to help people make better decisions to more effectively reduce the risks.
No worries.
We're currently fundraising in particular for integrated assessment, http://gcrinstitute.org/integrated-assessment. Most institutional funders have programs on only one risk at a time. We're patching integrated assessment work from other projects, but hope to get more dedicated integrated assessment funding. Something up to around $1M/yr would probably suit us well for now, but this is significantly higher than what we currently have, and every dollar helps.
This is actually an easy one, since we just finished shifting our focus. The biggest mistake we made was letting ourselves get caught up on an ad hoc, unfocused mix of projects, instead of prioritizing better. The integrated assessment is now our core means of prioritizing. See more at http://gcrinstitute.org/february-newsletter-new-directions-for-gcri.
Well, most people make the mistake of not focusing mainly on gcr reduction. Within the gcr community, I think the biggest mistake is not focusing on how best to reduce the risks. Instead a lot of people focus on the risks themselves.
We publish mainly in academic journals. It takes significant extra effort and introduces delays, but it almost always improves the quality of the final product, it attracts a wider audience, it can be used more widely, and it has significant reputation benefits. But we make heavy use of our academic careers and credentials. It's not for everyone, and that's OK.
It's become better and worse. Population, per capita quality of life, and values seem to be improving. But risks are piling up.
More, due mainly to technological and environmental change. Opportunities are also increasing. The opportunities are all around us (for example, the internet), but the risks can be so enormous.
Define?
It depends on what proposals they get, but I'm cautiously optimistic that this will really help develop a culture of responsibility and safety among AI researchers. More so because it's not just money - FLI and others are actively nurturing relationships.
All units of intrinsic value should be weighted equally regardless of location in time or space. (Intrinsic value: see http://sethbaum.com/ac/2012_Value-CBA.html.)
I don't get too worried about it.
Because Tony Barrett and I didn't see any existing institutes capable of working on gcr they way we thought it should be done, in particular working across all the risks with rigorous risk analysis & risk management methodology.
Totalitarianism is one. Another plausible one is toxic chemicals, but this might not be big enough to merit that level of concern. On toxics, see http://sethbaum.com/ac/2014_Rev-Grandjean.pdf.
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but at any rate, I don't have confident estimates for specific probabilities.
It hasn't affected things like retirement or children. Maybe it should, but it hasn't. The bigger factor is not gcr per se but fanatacism towards helping others. I push myself pretty hard, but I would probably be doing the same if I was focusing on, say, global poverty or animal welfare instead of gcr.