14 ms·

Who on the list is an expert on existential risk (and perhaps even beyond academia)?

• staunton 3y ago
  Who in the world is an expert on existential risk? It's kind of hard to have empirically tested knowledge about that sort of thing.
  • RandomLensman 3y ago
    Pretty sure there are people looking into nuclear deterrence, bioterrorism defense, planetary defense etc. (We didn't have a nuclear war or some bioweapon killing everyone, for example, despite warnings). There are people studying how previous societies got into existential risk situations, too. We also have a huge amount of socio-economic modelling going into climate change, for example. So I'd say there should be quite a few around.
• holmesworcester 3y ago
  Signatory Jan Taallin has founded an x-risk organization focused on AI, biotech, nuclear weapons, and climate change: https://futureoflife.org/ https://futureoflife.org/
• veerd 3y ago
  Most people that study AI existential risk specifically are studying it due to concerns about AI x-risk. So the list of relevant AI x-risk experts will be subject to massive selection effects. If instead you want to consider the highest status/most famous people working on AI in general, then the list of signatories here is a pretty good summary. From my flawed perspective as a casual AI enthusiast, Yann LeCun and Jürgen Schmidhuber are the most glaring omissions (and both have publicly stated their lack of concern about AI x-risk). Of course, the highest status people aren't necessarily the most relevant people. Unfortunately, it's more difficult for me to judge relevance than fame.