EA - Introducing the Existential Risks Introductory Course (ERIC) by Nandini Shiralkar

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Introducing the Existential Risks Introductory Course (ERIC), published by Nandini Shiralkar on August 19, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Crossposted to LessWrong. Introduction We (the Cambridge Existential Risks Initiative) ran an Existential Risks Introductory Course (ERIC) in the first quarter of 2022, aiming to introduce the field of existential risks, without being explicitly associated with any particular philosophy. We expect the programme to be most useful to people who are new to this field, and we hypothesised that we may be able to reach a different target audience by not explicitly branding it as EA. The full curriculum we used for the programme, along with exercises and organisation spotlights, can be found here. This was primarily designed by Callum McDougall, with some inputs from the rest of the CERI team. If you are interested in joining the next iteration of the course in Winter 2022 (either as a participant or as a facilitator), please fill out this interest form. This post contains an overview of the course, which is followed by an abbreviated version of the syllabus for the ease of gathering feedback. The weekly summaries may also be helpful for community builders looking for summaries of any of the core readings from our syllabus. We welcome any feedback on the content, exercises or anything else pertaining to the course, either here publicly on the Forum, or you can also reach out to us privately if you prefer that. Course overview The course consists of 8 weeks of reading (split into core and applied). Some weeks also include exercises, which participants are encouraged to complete and discuss in the session. Each week, participants will meet for 1.5 hour sessions where they will discuss the material and exercises with a facilitator. The topics for each week are as follows: Week 1: Introduction to Existential RisksProvides an introduction to x-risks, why they might be both highly important and neglected, and introduces some important terminology. Week 2: Natural & Anthropogenic RisksDiscusses natural risks, and risks from nuclear war and climate change. Week 3: Biosecurity, And How To Think About Future Risks Discusses risks from engineered pandemics, as well as a broader look at future risks in general and how we can reason about them and prepare for them. Week 4: Unaligned Artificial IntelligenceDiscusses risks from unaligned AI, and provides a brief overview of the different approaches that are being taken to try and solve the problem. Week 5: Dystopias, Lock-in & Unknown UnknownsConcludes the discussion of specific risks by discussing some more neglected risks. Also includes a discussion of the “unknown unknowns” problem, and how we can categorise and assess probabilities of risks. Week 6: Forecasting & Decision-makingMoves away from specific risks, and discusses broad strategies that can help mitigate a variety of risks, with a focus on improving forecasting and decision-making (both at the institutional and individual level). Week 7: Different Frameworks for Existential RiskFurther explores some alternative frameworks for x-risks than those found in The Precipice, e.g. FHI’s origin/scaling/endgame model, and the “Democratising Risk” paper. Week 8: Next StepsConcludes the fellowship with a lookback on the key themes in the material, and a discussion of how the fellows plan to put what they’ve learned into action (e.g. in their future careers). Abbreviated curriculum (Core readings) Week 1: Introduction to Existential Risks The first group of core materials here outlines the key ideas of Toby Ord’s book The Precipice, that we may be living in a uniquely important and dangerous time thanks to the threat of existential risks. What are the most important moral problems of our time? (10 mins.) The Precipice: Introduction, Chapters 1 & 2...