Catastrophic Risk and Deliberative Democracy

In 2024 and 2025, I was the co-PI for a seed-funded project on the ethics of catastrophic risk awarded by the Resilient Delta initiative (part of the Convergence alliance of universities in the Netherlands). 

The premise of the project was to research how governments can democratically consult the public on the various trade-offs involved in catastrophic risk reduction, such as misaligned AI, nuclear war, engineered pandemics, and climate change.

The output of the project was a prototype handbook on deliberative polling and catastrophic risk reduction. The handbook raises salient ethical considerations and offers advice on how to incorporate these considerations into a deliberative assembly on the topic.

The purpose of the funding was to kickstart a more substantial project in the future. Moving forward, we aim to continue to collaborate with academics and other stakeholders to help to improve the handbook. 

If you are interested in working with us, please get in touch.