Potential global catastrophic risk focus areas

Abstract

As part of our work on the Open Philanthropy Project, we’ve been exploring the possibility of getting involved in efforts to ameliorate potential global catastrophic risks (GCRs), by which we mean risks that could be bad enough to change the very long-term trajectory of humanity in a less favorable direction (e.g. ranging from a dramatic slowdown in the improvement of global standards of living to the end of industrial civilization or human extinction). Examples of such risks could include a large asteroid striking earth, worse-than-expected consequences of climate change, or a threat from a novel technology, such as an engineered pathogen.