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See Hinges and crises for expanded explanation.
So far, long-termist a x-risk oriented efforts to change the trajectory of the world focus on far-off events. This is on the assumption that we foresee some important problem and influence its outcome by working on the problem for longer. We thus start working on it sooner than others, we lay the groundwork for future research, we raise awareness, and so on.
Many longtermists propose that we now live at the “hinge of history”, usually understood on the timescale of critical centuries, or critical decades. But ”hinginess” is likely not constant: some short periods will be significantly more eventful than others. It is also possible that these periods will present even more leveraged opportunities for changing the world’s trajectory.
These “maximally hingey” moments might be best influenced by sustained efforts long before them (as described above). But it seems plausible that in many cases, the best realistic chance to influence them is “while they are happening”, via a concentrated effort at that moment. Some reasons for this: there are decreased problems with cluelessness; an increase in the resources spent on the problem; actual decisions being made by powerful actors, and so on.
Even if a specific crisis is not a “hinge of history”, crises often bring opportunities to change the established order. For example, policies well outside the Overton window can suddenly become live options, and intellectual development in disciplines and technologies (think of the sudden intense focus on reproducibility in epidemiology). These effects often persist for decades after the initial event (think of taking off your shoes at the airport; think of face masks in post-SARS countries) - and so shaping the response is of interest to longtermists.
Acting effectively during hinges or crises may depend on factors such as "do we have a relevant policy proposal in the drawer?", "do we have a team of experts able to advise?" or “do we have a relevant network?” It is possible to prepare these!
This document proposes the creation of an “emergency response team” as one sensible preparation.
We tested the above principles during the COVID pandemic, by launching a good-sized research and policy effort, Epidemic Forecasting (EpiFor). We had some success, with associated members advising legislators and international bodies and the associated research getting into top journals and so reaching millions of people.
Some takeaways:
Is it possible to fund, train, and sustain a longtermist response team in the absence of a current emergency? Perhaps - but for people we most want on board, the opportunity costs of being thus “benched” might be too high.
A more viable alternative is a reserve, or standing army: a team of researchers and managers who are “on call” for a future emergency, undergoing annual wargaming or similar refreshers to maintain readiness.
What the team ideally should have:
(Active Long-termist Emergency Response Team)
What do we need?
We propose to gather 30 to 50 “reservists”: people who are able to leap to respond to an emergency. They need to commit to fast activation - something like “given 2 days notice, I am able to switch to this work with >90% probability”.
Together they should cover the usual object-level domains, and also policy, ops, and narrower domains, e.g. regulators, hardware engineers, clinical trial PIs, lawyers and specialised counsel, NGO managers and directors, media.
We then create some structure - perhaps they form teams of 5-10 people centring on one domain, or one vertical.
Key abilities: <learn anything fast>, generalist research, stats, data science, ML, bio, policy, international relations,...
These requirements are quite severe, but we think there are enough people. Recently more EA projects have involved consulting, modelling, commercial forecasting, founding organizations, etc., and thus more of us have relevant experience. The obvious categories are academics, consultants, and the self-employed. Also, PhD students are a powerful “reserve army of labour”, since (given advisor approval) they have latitude to switch projects at short notice, often without extra funding. Some grantees may also be interested.
We create a "dormant" institution. It is incorporated, legally up-to-date, and able to receive and send money, hire people, etc. This could take the form of a series of NGOs under US, EU, and some other country's jurisdiction. (The teams can be hosted also in some existing institutions.) It has some amount of liquid capital in its account. It has managers on call and a roster of reservists. It has someone actively watching the world, ready to activate the relevant team when a clearly specified risk threshold and relatively low is reached.
Strong leadership is just as important as having experts. In particular, we need the ability to decompose problems into delegable parts, and more generally we need "structural reserves": all the processes and tools to maintain readiness and absorb more people when we need to. This structure includes coordinators for reservists and volunteers, and an oversupply of managers.
The institution organises annual readiness exercises, in sprints of 7-14 days. This brings the team together, to work either on a toy problem or wargame, or on some current minor instance of the problem.
The permanent ALERT staff will track what's going on with members, collecting regular state updates. We could coach reservists towards valuable skills (especially more general ones).
We could keep a live record of the team's collective network: all the contacts with experts, policymakers, funders, regulators, academia, and influential nodes. (The network is vital to supply credibility, without which the teams cannot influence policy.)
As well as the reservists, we should have a longer list of people who can help in some way / candidate reservists.
This list would be private (but that it exists would be public or semi-public, as well as the criteria involved). People who may be willing and able to assist in their domain in a crisis or sufficiently impactful/urgent project
Where can this team help? Where should they? Where shouldn’t they?
Good examples
Uncertain
Negative examples
The first role to fill is the secretary, the person who watches the world, maintains the basic institutional requirements, organises the readiness exercises, etc. Please apply here.
This post is intended to be readable as stand-alone, but also forms part of a series explaining my part in the EA response to COVID, my reasons for switching from AI alignment work for a full year, and some new ideas the experience gave me. We co-wrote it with Gavin Leech. Thanks to Nora Amman, Ben Pace, Max Dalton and Tomáš Gavenčiak for helpful comments on the draft.