I won't comment on their endorsements or strategy, but I will say that even if Carrick is a longshot it doesn't necessarily follow that it's a bad use of marginal dollars.

Thanks for flagging, I missed this and agree this should be in blog category per the policy. Will chat with mods to figure out how to fix.

Update: after discussing and looking at some background documentation with Oli, we think the claim about ‘potentially thousands of lives’ is sufficiently supported.

Dropping a quick comment to say I've upvoted this and might respond with more later. I do concede the claim about thousands of lives was not throughly scrutinized and I'm getting more info on that now (and will remove if it doesn't check out). I otherwise stand by what I've written and also think Oli has worthwhile points.

Thanks! And yes, this seems right to me.

Huge +1 to this. If anybody is reading this and wants to get funded to start down this career track, please apply to Open Phil's biosecurity scholarship: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity/open-philanthropy-biosecurity-scholarships

The program supports independent projects for people to learn about a field as well as degree programs.

Thanks Evan, and welcome to the forum!  I agree this is an important question for prioritization, and does imply that AI is substantially more important than bio (a statement I believe despite working on biosecurity, at least if we are only considering longtermism).  As Linch mentioned, we have policies/norms against publicly brainstorming information hazards.  If somebody is concerned about a biology risk that might constitute an information hazard, they can contact me privately to discuss options for responsible disclosure.

One possible advantage to using the platform would be that donations to charities are tax deductible, whereas donations to campaigns are not. If set up well, this mechanism could enable somebody to 'donate' to a campaign with tax deductibility.

Strong upvote. I think more people should be considering this as a skill/career to develop. For arms control and verification, I feel like these tools are potentially being overlooked (and could be useful across multiple GCR/xrisk-relevant areas).

I've heard good things about Jeffrey Lewis and his thinking on OSINT tools on the nuclear side of things: https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/people/jeffrey-lewis