We decided to change the name to reflect the fact that we don’t think you need to take a long-termist philosophical stance to work on AI risks and biorisks; the specific new name was chosen from among a few contenders after a survey process. The name change doesn’t reflect any sharp break from how we have operated in practice for the last while, so I don’t think there are any specific strategy changes it implies.
We decided to change the name to reflect the fact that we don’t think you need to take a long-termist philosophical stance to work on AI risks and biorisks; the specific new name was chosen from among a few contenders after a survey process. The name change doesn’t reflect any sharp break from how we have operated in practice for the last while, so I don’t think there are any specific strategy changes it implies.
I’ll also note that GCRs was the original name for this part of Open Phil, e.g. see this post from 2015 or this post from 2018.