EA - Legal Priorities Project – Annual Report 2022 by Legal Priorities Project

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Legal Priorities Project – Annual Report 2022, published by Legal Priorities Project on May 2, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.SummaryNote: A private version of this report with additional confidential updates has been shared with a few major donors and close collaborators. If you fall into this category and would like to access the extended version, please get in touch with us at [email protected] report presents a review of the Legal Priorities Project’s work in 2022, including key successes, statistics, bottlenecks, and issues. We also offer a short overview of our priorities for 2023 and briefly describe our methodology for updating our priorities. You can learn more about how to support our work at the end of the report.A PDF version of this report is available here.In 2022:Our research output per FTE was high to very high: With only 3.6 FTE researchers, we had 7 peer-reviewed papers (2 journal articles and 5 book chapters) accepted for publication, 3 papers currently under review, and one book under contract with Oxford University Press. We also added 7 papers to our Working Paper Series (for a total of 18), published a new chapter of our research agenda, and published 6 shorter pieces in online forums. We also spent significant time on reports aimed at informing our prioritization on artificial intelligence and biosecurity in particular (which we plan to publish in Q2 of 2023) and ran a writing competition on “Improving Cost-Benefit Analysis to Account for Existential and Catastrophic Risks” with a judging panel composed of eminent figures in law. Based on our experience, our research output was much higher than typical legal academic research groups of similar size.Beyond academic research, we analyzed ongoing policy efforts, and our research received positive feedback from policymakers. Relevant feedback and discussions provided valuable insight into what research would support decision-making and favorable outcomes, which we believe improved our prioritization.We experimented with running several events targeting different audiences and received hundreds of applications from students and academics at top institutions worldwide. Some participants have already reported significant updates to their plans as a result. Feedback on our events was overwhelmingly positive, and we gained valuable information about the different types of programs and their effectiveness, which will inform future events.Team morale remained high, including during stressful developments, and our operations ran smoothly.In 2023:Our research will increasingly focus on reducing specific types of existential risk based on concrete risk scenarios, shifting more focus toward AI risk. While this shift started in 2022, AI risk will become more central to our research in 2023. We will publish an update to our research agenda and theory of change accordingly.We will continue to publish research of various types. However, we will significantly increase our focus on non-academic publications, such as policy/technical reports and blog posts, in order to make our work more accessible to policymakers and a wider audience. As part of this strategy, we will also launch a blog featuring shorter pieces by LPP staff and invited researchers.We would like to run at least one, but ideally two, flagship field-building programs: The Legal Priorities Summer Institute and the Summer Research Fellowship.We will seek to raise at least $1.1m to maintain our current level of operations for another year. More optimistically, we aim to increase our team size by 1–3 additional FTE, ideally hiring a senior researcher with a background in US law to work on risks from advanced artificial intelligence.IntroductionThe Legal Priorities Project is an independent, global research and field-bui...