Damon’s research at Coefficient Giving focuses on potential risks from biology and approaches to address them.
Prior to joining Coefficient Giving, he worked as a research scholar at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, where he studied existential risks. He has a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. He also writes at his personal website.
Comparing conventional, chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons on cost per death and mass per death puts biological weapons in a class of their own.
Power is already centralised in the US President and Chinese General Secretary. Whoever seeks control during an AI transition, the easiest route runs through the executive.
Wars happen because states cannot credibly commit to the agreements they would both prefer. AIs could supply the missing enforcer, ending competition for control of the future.
How much faster could an AI-automated economy grow without inventing new technology? Reoptimizing across today's frontier plants and considering historical labor-intensive methods cuts the doubling time roughly in half, to four-to-eight months
How fast could an AI-automated economy actually start growing? Today's economy doesn't produce enough of the stuff that makes stuff. Restructuring takes a few years — but then the second doubling comes in half the time, and the economy is many times its current size within a decade.
How fast can an AI-driven economy grow? Economists expect a few percentage points; at best those closer to AI development imagine Dyson spheres within years. Who is correct?
I thought I'd document how I'm currently using AI tools, both because it's changed a lot in the past month and also in the hope that someone can look at this, be horrified, and tell me all the things I'm doing that could be better.
Whole brain emulation gets suggested as a potential AI-safety lever. Here we investigate two questions: when could we get it relative to superintelligence, and would it matter if we did?
Discussions of built-environment pandemic defense tend to treat far-UVC as the standout technology and air filtration as an afterthought. I think this gets the ranking wrong.
