1) There's an entire Global Health Security Agenda that has been shouting about what needs to be done for a decade, as have many other organizations - CHS, the US's Blue Ribbon Panel, Georgetown's GHSS, and I'm sure other places internationally. Ask them where to spend your money, or better yet, read their previous reports that already tell you what needs to be done.
2) For groups that are willing to think about biosecurity risks, or take advice from people who do, think about differential tech development when picking technology to fund. There are lots of technologies that have a clear upside, and almost no downside - biosurveillance, diagnostic technology, vaccine platforms, etc. Don't fund research into gain of function, and try to limit and weigh carefully when deciding what potential dual-use technology to fund.
3) For government decisionmakers - don't throw money into new bureaucracy. We have lots of existing bureaucracy, much of which should be reformed, but replacing it with a new structure and adding layers isn't going to help. And in the US, don't allow a post-9/11 move like what led to building the DHS.
[Question]
How would you advise someone decide between different biosecurity interventions?
A lot of money is going to be thrown into biosecurity. What advice would you give to someone (e.g. a policymaker or philanthropist) who is deciding between funding different projects?
Epistemic status: Speculation from two decently informed advocates armed with anecdata.
Note on process: After having some version of this conversation several times and saying, “we should probably write about this publicly,” we took the less heroic route: we recorded one of our conversations, fed the transcript into an LLM, and then substantially revised the structure, substance, and framing ourselves. We will not be sharing the transcript, as it is in...
TLDR: Take the population ethics quiz here: https://mdickens.me/pop-ethics/
Population ethics is an oft-overlooked subfield within ethics. Many people hold views that they don't realize contradict each other, or that have strange implications that they wouldn't endorse if they thought about it more.
Not just that—population ethics is a BIG DEAL. A lot of ethical decisions hinge on how you think about changes in future populations....
Headline finding: I audited 17 AI Safety Talent programmes. Zero of 17 have published any comparison group, rejected-applicant follow-up, matched control or randomisation. Not one. Every programme that mentions a counterfactual does it by asking participants to self-report.
Background
At least $70 million...
1) There's an entire Global Health Security Agenda that has been shouting about what needs to be done for a decade, as have many other organizations - CHS, the US's Blue Ribbon Panel, Georgetown's GHSS, and I'm sure other places internationally. Ask them where to spend your money, or better yet, read their previous reports that already tell you what needs to be done.
2) For groups that are willing to think about biosecurity risks, or take advice from people who do, think about differential tech development when picking technology to fund. There are lots of technologies that have a clear upside, and almost no downside - biosurveillance, diagnostic technology, vaccine platforms, etc. Don't fund research into gain of function, and try to limit and weigh carefully when deciding what potential dual-use technology to fund.
3) For government decisionmakers - don't throw money into new bureaucracy. We have lots of existing bureaucracy, much of which should be reformed, but replacing it with a new structure and adding layers isn't going to help. And in the US, don't allow a post-9/11 move like what led to building the DHS.