Conventional wisdom is that safeguarding humanity from the worst biological risks — microbes optimised to kill as many as possible — is difficult bordering on impossible, making bioweapons humanity’s single greatest vulnerability. Andrew Snyder-Beattie thinks conventional wisdom could be wrong.| 80,000 Hours
The second part of the AI 2027 timelines model relies primarily on insufficiently evidenced forecasts.| Reflective altruism
This post introduces the AI 2027 report.| Reflective altruism
Critics fear open-weight models could pose a major cybersecurity threat if misused and could even spell doom for humanity in a worst-case scenario.| Machine
AI firm expands Safety Systems team with engineers responsible for "identifying, tracking, and preparing for risks related to frontier AI models."| Machine
A leading power-seeking theorem due to Benson-Tilsen and Soares does not ground the needed form of instrumental convergence| Reflective altruism
Future versions of ChatGPT could let "people with minimal expertise" spin up deadly agents with potentially devastating consequences.| Machine
Power-seeking theorems aim to formally demonstrate that artificial agents are likely to seek power in problematic ways. I argue that leading power-seeking theorems do not succeed.| Reflective altruism
I'm writing a new guide to careers to help artificial general intelligence (AGI) go well. Here's a summary of the bottom lines that'll be in the guide as it stands. Stay tuned to hear our full reasoning and updates as our views evolve. In short: The chance of an AGI-driven technological explosion before 2030 — creating one of the most pivotal periods in history — is high enough to act on.| 80,000 Hours
The 20th century saw unprecedented change: nuclear weapons, satellites, the rise and fall of communism, third-wave feminism, the internet, postmodernism, game theory, genetic engineering, the Big Bang theory, quantum mechanics, birth control, and more. Now imagine all of it compressed into just 10 years.| 80,000 Hours
Maarten Boudry and Simon Friederich argue that natural selection may not produce selfish artificial systems| Reflective altruism
Technology and language are good places to start when thinking about what makes humans unique, and between them, language triumphs. Language is a prerequisite for technology, science…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
This post concludes my sub-series on existential biorisk by drawing lessons from the previous discussion| Reflective altruism
This post continues my investigation of biorisk from LLMs by looking at a recent redteaming study from the RAND Corporation.| Reflective altruism
OpenAI says its mission is to build AGI — an AI system that is better than human beings at everything. Should the world trust them to do this safely?| 80,000 Hours
