Random thought: another way in which such a group could prepare for action is to have some experience commissioning forecasts on short notice from platforms like Good Judgment, Metaculus, Hypermind, etc., so that when there’s some emergency (or signs that there might soon be an emergency, a la the early-Jan evidence about what became the COVID-19 pandemic), ALERT can immediately commission crowdcasts that help to track the development or advent of the emergency.
To do this, I propose the hypothetical example of a futuristic EA Early Warning Forecasting Center. The main intent is that, in the lead up to or early stages of potential major crises (particularly in bio and AI), EAs can potentially (a) have several weeks of lead time to divert our efforts to respond rapidly to such crises and (b) target those efforts effectively.
Also the direction of ALERT is generally more on “doing”. Doing seems often very different from forecasting, often needs different people—part of the relevant skills is plausibly even anticorrelated.
Y’all are fully complementary I think. From Linch’s proposal:
So the appropriate structure of an elite Forecasting Center might be to pair it up with a elite crisis response unit, possibly in a network/constellation model such that most people are very part-time before urgent crises, such that the additional foresight is guaranteed to be acted on, rather than tossing the forecasts to the rest of the movement (whether decisionmakers or community members) to be acted on later.
Random thought: another way in which such a group could prepare for action is to have some experience commissioning forecasts on short notice from platforms like Good Judgment, Metaculus, Hypermind, etc., so that when there’s some emergency (or signs that there might soon be an emergency, a la the early-Jan evidence about what became the COVID-19 pandemic), ALERT can immediately commission crowdcasts that help to track the development or advent of the emergency.
See also what Linch proposes in “Why short-range forecasting can be useful for longtermism”:
Yep, loved it. ALERT wants to add readiness exercises, network capital portfolio, and a pre-allocated budget on top.
Also the direction of ALERT is generally more on “doing”. Doing seems often very different from forecasting, often needs different people—part of the relevant skills is plausibly even anticorrelated.
Y’all are fully complementary I think. From Linch’s proposal: