I suggest making clearer that these are one researcher's rough estimates. Otherwise I think it gives a false sense of precision. Maybe by titling the infographic "Rough guess at global catastrophic risks from The Precipice" or similar.
This looks great! And I agree with Aslan that the minesweeper edition feels very different and I am glad you created it.
One note: existential risks are a distinct concept to both extinction risks and global catastrophic risks. Table 6.1 in Toby's book describes existential risks which is what you are depicting here - existential risks include extinction risk but also the risk that humanity will turn into a permanent dystopia as well as permanent civilisational collapse (but humanity lives on).
Global catastrophic risks are different again: they are risks that kill at least 10% of the human population.
I've been reading Toby Ord's thoughtful book, The Precipice. In it, he estimates there's a 1 in 6 chance of humanity not surviving the next century. He has a table that summarizes the main sources of risk as he sees them that I thought could be more sharable and comparable if it were put into a diagram. So I made the following diagram in Illustrator (here's the file if you want to play with it). If this seems like a useful thing to do, I'd love to get feedback on how it can be improved:
Here's another version, that I set up more like minesweeper with 100 possible futures:
There is a lot of research and data that went into Toby's estimates, so the downside of making a diagram that's less accurate since it will not be wrapped in all of the context from the book, but the upside is that it's potentially more sharable. (this seems to be an unanswered question) But it could still work as a good conversation starter for those thinking about cause prioritization and longtermism.
A preliminary estimate, and a request for better ones.
Summary
I believe the standard literature estimates for the number of DALYs attributable to a case of stunting are too low, largely because they don’t account for the long term effects. This means that childhood nutritional interventions that reduce the prevalence of stunting may be substantially more cost-effective than previously believed.
Epistemic status
Exploratory and back-o...
I’ve been feeling pretty shaken since the METR report about the Hugging Face incident came out last week. Over the weekend, I wrote up some thoughts on how lonely the AI situation sometimes feels to me. It’s more personal than what I’d usually share publicly, but I thought I’d post it here in case it resonates with anyone else.
I’m very grateful to the man...
TL;DR: Kairos has raised $50 million from Coefficient Giving for two years of funding, one of the largest commitments they’ve made towards AI safety fieldbuilding to date. We’re using this to make an ambitious push for growing Kairos, broadening our portfolio of talent infrastructure projects and incubating new organizations. We’ve doubled in size in the last six mon...
I suggest making clearer that these are one researcher's rough estimates. Otherwise I think it gives a false sense of precision. Maybe by titling the infographic "Rough guess at global catastrophic risks from The Precipice" or similar.