forecasting newsletter by nuno sempere

Excerpt from the most recent update from the ALERT team:

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1: What a week! The news, data, and analyses are coming in fast and furious.

Overall, ALERT team members feel that the risk of an H5N1 pandemic emerging over the coming decade is increasing. Team members estimate that the chance that the WHO will declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) within 1 year from now because of an H5N1 virus, in whole or in part, is 0.9% (range 0.5%-1.3%). The team sees the chance going up substantially over the next decade, with the 5-year chance at 13% (range 10%-15%) and the 10-year chance increasing to 25% (range 20%-30%).

their estimated 10 year risk is a lot higher than I would have anticipated.

I suspect the primary reasons you want to break up Deepmind from Google is to:

1. Increase their autonomy, reducing pressure from google to race
2. Reduce Deepmind's access to capital and compute, reducing their competitiveness

Perhaps that goes without saying, but I think it's worth explicitly mentioning. In a world without AI risk, I don't believe you would be citing various consumer harms to argue for a break up.

The traditional argument for breaking up companies and preventing mergers is to reduce the company's market power, increasing consumer surplus. In this case, the implicit reason for breaking up Deepmind is to decrease its competitiveness thus reducing consumer surplus.

I think it's perfectly fine to argue for this, I just really want us to be explicit about it.

I'm awestruck, that is an incredible track record. Thanks for taking the time to write this out.

These are concepts and ideas I regularly use throughout my week and which have significantly shaped my thinking. A deep thanks to everyone who has contributed to FHI, your work certainly had an influence on me.

I think I'm sympathetic to Oxford's decision.

By the end, the line between genuine scientific inquiry and activistic 'research' got quite blurry at FHI. I don't think papers such as: 'Proposal for a New UK National Institute for Biological Security', belong in an academic institution, even if I agree with the conclusion.

One thing that stood out to me reading the comments on Reddit, was how much of the poor reception that could have been avoided with a little clearer communication.

For people such as MacAskill, who are deeply familiar with effective altruism, the question: "Why would SBF pretend to be an Effective Altruist if he was just looking to do fraud?"  is quite the conundrum. Of all the types of altruism, why specifically pick EA as the vehicle to smuggle your reputation? EA was already unlikeable and elitist before the scandal. Why not donate to puppies and Harvard like everyone else?

I actually admire MacAskill for asking that question. The easy out, would be to say: "how could we have been so foolish, SBF was clearly never a real EA". But he instead grapples with the fact that SBF seems to have been genuinely motivated by effective altruism, and that these ideals must have played some part in SBFs decision to commit fraud.

But for any listener who is not as deeply familiar with the effective altruism movement, and doesn't know its reputation, the question comes off as hopelessly naive. The emphasis they hear is: "Why would SBF, a fraudulent billionaire, pretend to be an Effective Altruist?" The answer to that is obvious - malicious actors pretend to be altruistic all the time!

I see EA communication make this mistake all the time. A question or idea whose merit is obvious to you might not be obvious to everyone else if you don't spell out the assumptions it rests on.

I think I am misunderstanding the original question then?

I mean if you ask: "what you all think about the series as an entry point for talking about some of these EA issues with friends, family, colleagues, and students"

then the reach is not the 10 million people watching the show, it's the people you get a chance to speak to.

Wasn't the Future Fund quite explicitly about longtermist projects?

I mean if you worked for an animal foundation and were in a call about give directly, I can understand that somebody might say: "Look we are an animal fund, global poverty is outside our scope".

Obviously saying "I don't care about poverty" or something sufficiently close that your counterpart remembers it as that, is not ideal, especially not when you're speaking to an ex-minister of the United Kingdom.

But before we get mad at those who ran the Future Fund, please consider there's much context we don't have. Why did this call get set up in the first place? I would expect them to be screening mechanisms in place to prevent this kind of mismatch. What Rory remembers might not have been what the Future Fund grant maker remembers and there might have been a mismatch between the very blunt 'SF culture' the future fund operated by and what an ex-minister expects.

That said I have a very positive impression of Rory Stewart, and it saddens me to hear our community gave him this perception. Had I been in his shoes, I'm not sure I would have thought any different.

I'm working on an article about gene drives to eradicate malaria, and am looking for biology experts who can help me understand certain areas I'm finding confusing and fact check claims I feel unsure about.

If you are a masters or grad student in biology and would be interested in helping, I would be incredibly grateful.

An example of a question I've been trying to answer today:

How likely is successful crossbreeding between subspecies of Anopheles Gambiae (such as anopheles gambiae s.s. and anopheles arabiensis), and how likely is successful crossbreeding between anopheles gambiae and other complexes?

If you know the answer to questions like these or would have an easy time finding it out, send me a dm! Happy to pay for your time.