“The Precipice Revisited” by Toby_Ord

I'm often asked about how the existential risk landscape has changed in the years since I wrote The Precipice. Earlier this year, I gave a talk on exactly that, and I want to share it here.

Here's a video of the talk and a full transcript.

In the years since I wrote The Precipice, the question I’m asked most is how the risks have changed. It's now almost four years since the book came out, but the text has to be locked down a long time earlier, so we are really coming up on about five years of changes to the risk landscape.

I’m going to dive into four of the biggest risks — climate change, nuclear, pandemics, and AI — to show how they’ve changed. Now a lot has happened over those years, and I don’t want this to just be recapping the news in fast-forward. But [...]

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Outline:

(01:30) Climate Change

(01:58) Carbon Emissions

(03:18) Climate Sensitivity

(06:43) Nuclear

(06:46) Heightened Chance of Onset

(08:16) Likely New Arms Race

(09:54) Funding Collapse

(10:53) Pandemics

(10:56) Covid

(16:03) Protective technologies

(18:59) AI in Biotech

(20:32) AI

(20:50) RL agents ⇒ language models

(24:59) Racing

(27:05) Governance

(30:14) Conclusions

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First published:
July 12th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iKLLSYHvnhgcpoBxH/the-precipice-revisited

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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