Crossposted to the EA Forum.

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 Risks
Provides an introduction to x-risks, why they might be both highly important and neglected, and introduces some important terminology.
Week 2: Natural & Anthropogenic Risks
Discusses 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 Intelligence
Discusses risks from unaligned AI, and provides a brief overview of the different approaches that are being taken to try and

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