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This is: Project Ideas in Biosecurity for EAs, published by Davidmanheim on the AI Alignment Forum.
In conjunction with a group of other EA biosecurity folk, I helped brainstorm a set of projects which seem useful, and which require various backgrounds but which, as far as we know, aren't being done, or could use additional work
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. Many EAs have expressed interest in doing something substantive related to research in bio, but are unsure where to start - this is intended as one pathway to do so.
Note: I'm also happy to hear from people who weren't involved in our brainstorming about additional ideas - but privately! Please don't post them as comments, both because we aren't necessarily endorsing their usefulness / relevance, and because many project ideas are close to infohazards, and we don't advise people going and doing such work without (private) discussions about risks and precautions, to avoid unilateralist's curse. (For further information, see this comment.)
Ideally, this post will be updated as people publish work on these topics - let me know and I can link to Contributions, or perhaps even things to mark Done.
What is this list for?
We think that each of these is both a substantive and valuable question, which we'd like to see someone answer well. We think they are minimally info-hazardous, but still urge some degree of mindfulness about the issue.
All of these projects should start with literature reviews - there is relevant work on all of these, and you need to know about it. Sometimes, the paper that does what we asked for exists - and if so, finding it is helpful. If not, a literature review is, by itself, often a useful post / paper, and for some of the questions, it's all that is needed. If you're not sure where to start, here's a good basic introduction.
If you do a literature review, and think there is more to be done, or want to publish them and aren't sure how, or want feedback, there are many researchers that can advise or help on next steps. (But only ask once you have drafts of the literature review, or better, project plans - until that point, the goal is to see if more people can do research, and have more EAs able to do this type of work on their own!)
If you're fairly confident you have a track record that shows you know how to do this type of work, many seem like good subjects for grant proposals. They would also be clear evidence that you can do research. If you're interested in academia, like getting into a graduate program is biosecurity, publishing a paper is a great idea. (If you're interested in working in EA research, since doing such projects is a good way to show people you can do that as well.) And if you're in school, and think you can make one of these into a thesis or paper, that would be great as well.
Note that many of these, or parts of them, could be something as short as a good EA forum post, but some could easily be as long as a PhD dissertation - or more. A critical part of doing research is narrowing your scope based on what you can do!
Ideas by Discipline / Subject Areas
We've split these up roughly by area of knowledge or type of work they involve. Many could be approached more than one way, but it's useful even though disciplinary boundaries are always a bit overly restrictive and imprecise.
Economics
Analysis of size/other characteristics of bioeconomy versus other transformative tech economies past and present.
Additional Rob Carlson-like estimates for overall technology proliferation, similar to e.g./, http://www.synthesis.cc/synthesis/2016/03/on_dna_and_transistors
Economic assessment of the cost to do a given type of project, for example, analysis of bio-related job salaries in different sectors across nations, estimating market sizes in different countries, economic proxies (e.g. reagents, raw materials, capital etc.)...
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