Global Catastrophic Risk Institute

What problem is the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute working on?

GCRI works on the risk of events that could significantly harm or even destroy human civilisation at the global scale — events such as nuclear war, the deployment of misaligned artificial intelligence, and catastrophic pandemics.

Working to protect humanity's long-term future could potentially have an enormous impact, but there are relatively few other organisations researching ways to protect the long-term future. To learn more, read 80,000 Hours' case for reducing existential risks.

What does the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute do?

As a think tank, GCRI bridges the worlds of scholarship and professional practice in government, private industry, and other sectors. GCRI researches potential threats to human civilisation and aims to develop highly effective solutions for reducing the risk by leveraging both the best available scholarship and the demands of real-world decision-making.

GCRI has produced a number of research publications furthering the field of catastrophic risk analysis. Its focus areas include:

• Aftermath of global catastrophe: How well would survivors of global catastrophe fare? This is perhaps the largest and most important point of uncertainty in the study of global catastrophic risk.
• Artificial intelligence: AI is an important emerging issue. It demands an interdisciplinary study including computer science as well as the social science of how AI is built and used.
• Cross-risk evaluation and prioritisation: Some decisions require comparison of multiple global catastrophic risks, including decisions about actions that could decrease one risk and increase another, and decisions of how to allocate scarce resources across different risks.
• Nuclear war: The study of nuclear war has a long history, but basic questions concerning the risk and how to reduce the risk have not been well characterised.
• Risk and decision analysis: The probability and severity of global catastrophe are not easy to quantify, but rigorous risk and decision analysis techniques can nonetheless be valuable for informing risk reduction decisions.
• Solutions and strategy: Efforts to reduce the risk of global catastrophe should go beyond theoretical scholarship to take into account the real-world context in which risk-reduction solutions would be implemented.

GCRI also hosts events and provides advice on careers, research directions, and other kinds of consulting related to global catastrophic risks.

This charity meets the requirements to be supported by Giving What We Can as an unlisted charity — read more about our inclusion criteria.

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