Deputy Director at the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative.
elizabethcooper
Karma: 157
Likely a reason this hasn’t been done yet (and why we aren’t saying 100% we’ll do this)--it’s very difficult to create a “good” application and process, nonetheless create one that multiple orgs would all find valuable and be able to fit into their workflows. I’m happy to listen to any feedback/input you may have on applications that you thought allowed you to present yourself best.
This is something that BERI has actually been discussing! If anyone is interested in talking to us more about this (either from a hiring/evaluation perspective or from a candidate perspective, you can send an email to contact@existence.org and I’ll follow up.
This is a program I’m incredibly interested in applying for, but I work full-time. Do you have any plans to offer a longer-duration but part-time version of this program in the near- to medium-future?
An updated interview with Rachel Glennerster! Even though she’s obviously a legend in international development, I had a fascinating conversation with her earlier this year about longtermism and how she holds space/concern for both immediate needs and longtermism.
+1 for Bob Fischer!
Absolutely! Our focus this year is on reinforcements and intersections of risk, so we will be doing more interdisciplinary sessions rather than doing deep-dives or having highly technical conversations focused solely on siloed risk areas. This would be a great way to students to get exposed to a wide variety of different ideas and perspectives without needing much, if any, background or technical knowledge.
Absolutely! Our goal is to ensure a diverse audience of people from many backgrounds, both within and outside Stanford. However, we do have limited in-person capacity, and we are giving some preference to individuals with a track record of working in multiple x-risk topics areas to support this year’s focus on x-risk intersections and reinforcements. That said, we have ample virtual space available, so we encourage almost everyone to sign up for online attendance!
Given the focus on intersections and reinforcements, our panels and presentations will be very interdisciplinary and cross-cutting; we won’t be doing deep dives into specific topic areas. So don’t expect extended sessions solely focused on AI, nuclear war, etc.
I can confidently say that IASEAI is seriously exploring Swapcard for the 2026 iteration. Regarding policymakers attending, this is a fair criticism, but one that’s just much more difficult to achieve in practice. Specifically for 2025, funding for the February event wasn’t even secured until late 2024; senior officials often have calendars booked months in advance, so I’m not surprised there was a lack of policymakers in attendance given the relative short notice + competing events happening in Paris that week + this being a brand new event. I expect this will improve somewhat organically over time as IASEAI builds brand credibility.