Risk & Catastrophic Risk

Two versions of this path showed up in our community. One is industry risk work: trust & safety, risk prevention and integrity teams at large tech companies. The other is catastrophic-risk research: institutes and think tanks working on AI risk, biorisk and other global threats, a field with deep philosophical roots.

The lay of the land

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On the industry side, every large tech company runs teams whose job is preventing harm on and through the platform. They sit alongside engineering and policy and hire analysts who can think carefully about edge cases at scale. Roles are advertised as risk analyst, trust & safety analyst, integrity specialist or risk prevention specialist. On the research side, a small world of institutes works on the largest threats; the roles are research assistant, researcher and program associate, and hiring often goes through fellowships and advising programs rather than open postings. Industry pays better and teaches operations; research is closer to philosophy and has fewer seats. Either way, a good first move is joining a structured conversation program like GCRI’s below. This field talks to newcomers.

Philosophers who’ve done it

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McKenna Fitzgerald

Deputy Director, Global Catastrophic Risk Institute

BA in Philosophy, UC Berkeley

• Noam Maoz — MA in Philosophy of Technology (Tel-Aviv), risk prevention specialist in tech at Meta, long-time Let’s Phi community member; spoke at our April 2023 workshop

From our events

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• Operationalising Philosophy for Risk with Noam Maoz (April 2023)
• Ethics for Preventing Global Catastrophe with McKenna Fitzgerald (April 2022)

Start here

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• Useful Resources for a Career in Risk and Tech — our round-up for philosophers looking at risk roles
• The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute runs a recurring Advising and Collaboration Program, a low-commitment way to talk to people in the field
• The 80,000 Hours job board carries most catastrophic-risk and AI-governance openings; see the opportunities board