My goal has been to help as many sentient beings as possible as much as possible since I was quite young, and I decided to prioritize X-risk and improving the long-term future at around age 13. Toward this end, growing up I studied philosophy, psychology, social entrepreneurship, business, economics, the history of information technology, and futurism.
A few years ago I wrote a book “Ways to Save The World” which imagined broad innovative strategies for preventing existential risk and improving the long-term future.
Upon discovering Effective Altruism in January 2022 while studying social entrepreneurship at the University of Southern California, I did a deep dive into EA and rationality and decided to take a closer look at the possibility of AI caused X-risk and lock-in, and moved to Berkeley to do longtermist community building work.
I am now looking to close down a small business I have been running to research AI enabled safety research and longtermist trajectory change research, including concrete mechanisms, full time. I welcome offers of employment or funding as a researcher on these areas.
Highly Pessimistic to Pessimistic-Moderate Estimates of Lives Saved by X-Risk Work
This short-form supplements a post estimating how many lives x-risk work saves on average.
Following are four alternative pessimistic scenarios, two of which are highly pessimistic, and two of which fall between pessimistic and moderate.
Except where stated, each has the same assumptions as the original pessimistic estimate, and is adjusted from the baseline estimates of 10^16 lives possible and one life saved per hour of work or $100 donated.
It is 100% impossible to prevent existential risk, or it is 100% impossible to accurately predict what will reduce X-risk. In this case, we get an estimate that in expectation, on average, x-risk work may extremely pessimistically have zero positive impact and have the negative impact of wasting resources. I think it is somewhat unreasonable to conclude with absolutely certainty an existential catastrophe is inevitable or unpredictable, but others may disagree.
Humanity lasts as long as the typical mammalian species, ~1 million years. This would lead to three orders of magnitude reduction in expected value from the pessimistic estimate, giving an estimate that over the next 10,000 years, in expectation, on average, x-risk work will very pessimistically save one life for every 1,000 hours of work or every $100,000 donated. *Because humanity goes extinct in a relatively short amount of time in this scenario, x-risk work has not technically sustainably prevented existential risk, but this estimate has the benefit of using other species to give an outside view.
Digital minds are possible, but interstellar travel is impossible. This estimate is highly speculative. My understanding is that Bostrom estimated 15 additional orders of magnitude if digital minds are possible, given that we are able to inhabit other star systems. I have no idea if anything like this holds up if we only inhabit earth. But if it does, assuming a 1⁄10 chance digital minds are possible, the possibility of digital minds gives a 14 orders of magnitude increase from the original pessimistic estimate so that, over the next 10,000 years, in expectation, on average, x-risk work will moderately pessimistically save approximately one trillion lives per minute of work or per dollar donated.
Interstellar travel is possible, but digital minds are impossible. Nick Bostrom estimates that if emulations are not possible and so humans must remain in biological form, there could be 10^37 biological human lives at 100 years per life, or 21 orders of magnitude greater than the original pessimistic estimate. Assuming a 1⁄10 chance interstellar travel is possible, this adds 20 orders of magnitude so that, over the next 10,000 years, in expectation, on average, x-risk work will moderately pessimistically save approximately a billion billion (10^18) lives per minute of work or per dollar donated.