To offer some examples of similar things that I’ve been involved in—the trigger has often been some new regulatory or legislative process.
“woah the EU is going to regulate for AI safety … we should get some people together to work out how this could be helpful/harmful, whether/how to nudge, what to say, and whether we need someone full-time on this” → here
“woah the US (NIST) is going to regulate for AI safety...” → here
“woah the UK wants to have a new Resilience Strategy...” → here
“woah the UN is redoing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction? It would be cool to get existential risk in that” → here, from Clarissa Rios Rojas
This is the kind of reactive, cross-organisational, quick response you’re talking about. At the moment, this is done mostly through informal, trusted networks. Could be good to expand this, have a bigger set of people willing to jump in to help on various topics. The list seems most promising on that regard.
Other organisations:
CSET was in some ways a response to “woah the conversation around AI in DC is terrible and ill-informed”—a kind of emergency response.
FLI have been good at taking advantage of critical junctures through e.g. their huge Open Letters.
ALLFED has a rapid response capability, they wrote about it here. Having a plan, triaging, and bringing in volunteers seem like sensible steps.
Some of the monitoring work being done full-time (not by volunteers) in DC, London and Brussels seems especially useful for raising the alert to others.
I think this is a very cool idea!
To offer some examples of similar things that I’ve been involved in—the trigger has often been some new regulatory or legislative process.
“woah the EU is going to regulate for AI safety … we should get some people together to work out how this could be helpful/harmful, whether/how to nudge, what to say, and whether we need someone full-time on this” → here
“woah the US (NIST) is going to regulate for AI safety...” → here
“woah the UK wants to have a new Resilience Strategy...” → here
“woah the UK wants to set up a UK ARPA...” → here
“woah the UN is redoing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction? It would be cool to get existential risk in that” → here, from Clarissa Rios Rojas
This is the kind of reactive, cross-organisational, quick response you’re talking about. At the moment, this is done mostly through informal, trusted networks. Could be good to expand this, have a bigger set of people willing to jump in to help on various topics. The list seems most promising on that regard.
Other organisations:
CSET was in some ways a response to “woah the conversation around AI in DC is terrible and ill-informed”—a kind of emergency response.
FLI have been good at taking advantage of critical junctures through e.g. their huge Open Letters.
ALLFED has a rapid response capability, they wrote about it here. Having a plan, triaging, and bringing in volunteers seem like sensible steps.
Some of the monitoring work being done full-time (not by volunteers) in DC, London and Brussels seems especially useful for raising the alert to others.
Finally, CSER’s Lara Mani has been doing some really cool stuff around scenario exercises and rapid response—like this workshop. For example, she went to Saint Vincent to help with the evaluation of their response to the eruption of La Soufrière (linked to her work on volcanic GCR). She also co-wrote: When It Strikes, Are We Ready? Lessons Identified at the 7th Planetary Defense Conference in Preparing for a Near-Earth Object Impact Scenario. Basically, I think exercises could be really useful too.
Just thinking out loud, natural triggers in the longtermist biosecurity space (where I’m by far most familiar) would be:
a disease event or other early warning signal from public health surveillance
new science & tech development in virology/biotech/etc
shifts in international relations or norms relevant to state bioweapons programs
indications that a non-state group was pursuing existentially risky bio capabilities
… anything else?
On my end, the FLI link is broken: https://futureoflife.org/category/laws/open-letters-laws/