Potential Megaproject: 'The Cooperation Project' (or the like)
This is a very loose idea, based on observations like these:
* We have ongoing geopolitical tensions (e.g. China-US, China-Taiwan, Russia-Ukraine) and a lot of resources and attention spent on those.
* We have (increasing?) risks from emerging technology that potentially threaten everyone. It's difficult to estimate the risk levels, but there seems to be an emerging consensus that we are on a reckless path, even from perspectives concerned purely with individual or national self-interest.
The project would essentially seek to make a clear case for broad cooperation toward avoiding widely agreed-upon bad outcomes from emerging technologies — outcomes that are in nobody's interest. The work could, among other things, consist in reaching out to key diplomats as well as doing high-visibility public outreach that emphasizes cooperation as key to addressing risks from emerging technologies.
Reasons it might be worth pursuing:
* The degree of cooperation between major powers, especially wrt tech development, is plausibly a critical factor in how well the future will go. Even marginal improvements might be significant.
* A strong self-interested case can seemingly be made for increasing cooperation, but a problem might be its relatively low salience as well as primitive status and pride psychology preventing this case from being acted on.
* Even if the case is fairly compelling to people, other motivations might nevertheless feel more compelling and motivating; slight pushes in terms of how salient certain considerations are, both in the minds of the public and leaders, could potentially tip the scales in terms of which paths end up being pursued.
* The broader goal seems quite commonsensical and like something few people would outright oppose (though see the counter-considerations below).
* The work might act as a lever or catalyst of sorts: one can make compelling arguments regarding specific tec