These were written as I was reading the post, so some of them are addressed by points brought up later. They are also a bit too sardonic.
“For all key risks, humanity’s path to existential security cannot be brought about by the actions of any single country, making more effective international cooperation essential”
Is this actually true? Not sure. For instance, if the US, China and maybe the UK decide to not do anything too crazy like getting into an AI arms race, that seems like it might leave us in a decent position, AI policy-wise.
“This combination of activities has granted SI mandates from UN institutions, as well as the Swiss government, to directly work on policy processes relevant to existential risk reduction”
Mandates but no money? “Mandates” sounds good, but not sure what it means.
[note: my initial impression was wrong, for instance, later you say] “We have signed a grant agreement of CHF 50,000 from the Swiss Government’s International Public Law Division for a project on existential risk governance led by SI’s board member Igor Linkov. Our collaboration with the Geneva Science-Policy Interface has yielded another grant agreement of CHF 30,000 for work on the tabletop exercise on pandemic preparedness.”. Nice. But is this the same “mandate”.
“Science-policy interface” is a really neat construction, but I wouldn’t call Global Priorities research a “science”
“This is why SI could fill a gap in an information-rich but time-scarce environment”. More plainly expressed sentences could also fill a gap in verbiage-rich but transparency-scare environments. Ok, this is mean. But, for instance, I think I could get a better idea of what you are doing if you word this as: “We try to build relationships with and make recommendations to really busy bureacrats who are nonetheless a bit altruistically inclined. Eventually, we could position ourselves so as to build international institutions for existential risk reduction, like a new treaty or the International Atomic Energy Agency”. But is that what you are doing? I sort of get the vague feeling that I don’t know how you are spending most of your hours.
“SI is embedded in one of the few international policy hubs—Geneva—and adapts its strategy in response to arising opportunities”. The word “embedded” rubs me the wrong way.
“2021 has marked a breakthrough in international policymakers’ responsiveness to longtermist concerns.” ⇒ Policymakers are now more worried about weird and unexpected things because COVID provides a salient example.
“Leveraging this window of opportunity, SI works with them to reduce existential risks and further long-term governance via the impact pathways of the international system.”. I am really not sure what proportion of impact of this leveraging SI is claiming, or what proportion should be allocated to it.
“Began to work on the UN’s Our Common Agenda processes”. Directly??? In what capacity?
“co-develop a workshop series”: Would the series have happened in your absence? What % of the value was due to your participation?
“Some international organizations, like the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the International Science Council, also explicitly stated an interest in developing a better understanding of GCRs as a result”. My first thought on reading this is “nice!”. But “stated an interest in developing a better understanding” is actually extremely non-committal. What do you think it will/could cash out to?
“Without SI, FHI Bio would have been less likely to get an in-depth look behind the scenes of international diplomacy and unlikely to connect to key stakeholders in a setting where personal discussion allowed for the divulging of insider information and personal opinion”. How much less likely?
“Beyond taking a significant amount of time out of their busy days, many diplomats would also have needed security clearance to participate.”. Why the security clearance?
Circling back to this, this report hits almost none of the notes in lukeprog’s Features that make a report especially helpful to me, which might be one reason why I got the impression that the authors were speaking a different dialect.
Specific nitpicks
These were written as I was reading the post, so some of them are addressed by points brought up later. They are also a bit too sardonic.
“For all key risks, humanity’s path to existential security cannot be brought about by the actions of any single country, making more effective international cooperation essential”
Is this actually true? Not sure. For instance, if the US, China and maybe the UK decide to not do anything too crazy like getting into an AI arms race, that seems like it might leave us in a decent position, AI policy-wise.
“This combination of activities has granted SI mandates from UN institutions, as well as the Swiss government, to directly work on policy processes relevant to existential risk reduction”
Mandates but no money? “Mandates” sounds good, but not sure what it means.
[note: my initial impression was wrong, for instance, later you say] “We have signed a grant agreement of CHF 50,000 from the Swiss Government’s International Public Law Division for a project on existential risk governance led by SI’s board member Igor Linkov. Our collaboration with the Geneva Science-Policy Interface has yielded another grant agreement of CHF 30,000 for work on the tabletop exercise on pandemic preparedness.”. Nice. But is this the same “mandate”.
“Science-policy interface” is a really neat construction, but I wouldn’t call Global Priorities research a “science”
“This is why SI could fill a gap in an information-rich but time-scarce environment”. More plainly expressed sentences could also fill a gap in verbiage-rich but transparency-scare environments. Ok, this is mean. But, for instance, I think I could get a better idea of what you are doing if you word this as: “We try to build relationships with and make recommendations to really busy bureacrats who are nonetheless a bit altruistically inclined. Eventually, we could position ourselves so as to build international institutions for existential risk reduction, like a new treaty or the International Atomic Energy Agency”. But is that what you are doing? I sort of get the vague feeling that I don’t know how you are spending most of your hours.
“SI is embedded in one of the few international policy hubs—Geneva—and adapts its strategy in response to arising opportunities”. The word “embedded” rubs me the wrong way.
“2021 has marked a breakthrough in international policymakers’ responsiveness to longtermist concerns.” ⇒ Policymakers are now more worried about weird and unexpected things because COVID provides a salient example.
“Leveraging this window of opportunity, SI works with them to reduce existential risks and further long-term governance via the impact pathways of the international system.”. I am really not sure what proportion of impact of this leveraging SI is claiming, or what proportion should be allocated to it.
“Began to work on the UN’s Our Common Agenda processes”. Directly??? In what capacity?
“co-develop a workshop series”: Would the series have happened in your absence? What % of the value was due to your participation?
“Some international organizations, like the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the International Science Council, also explicitly stated an interest in developing a better understanding of GCRs as a result”. My first thought on reading this is “nice!”. But “stated an interest in developing a better understanding” is actually extremely non-committal. What do you think it will/could cash out to?
“Without SI, FHI Bio would have been less likely to get an in-depth look behind the scenes of international diplomacy and unlikely to connect to key stakeholders in a setting where personal discussion allowed for the divulging of insider information and personal opinion”. How much less likely?
“Beyond taking a significant amount of time out of their busy days, many diplomats would also have needed security clearance to participate.”. Why the security clearance?
Circling back to this, this report hits almost none of the notes in lukeprog’s Features that make a report especially helpful to me, which might be one reason why I got the impression that the authors were speaking a different dialect.