BiosecurityA few weeksStarter
History of biosecurity project ideas
History is full of biosecurity lessons: policies that backfired, quarantines that worked, and what nuclear governance can teach us.
Reading & writingView project
GovernancePhilosophyPolicyA few weeksIntermediateFree
What does the Baruch Plan teach compute governance?
Pick three lessons Zaidi and Dafoe draw from the failed attempt at international control of nuclear weapons. For each, argue whether it transfers to AI compute: chips are easier to track than ideas but harder than uranium.
Download PDFReading & writing
Why it matters
History is one of the few sources of evidence about controlling a powerful technology internationally.
Output: A policy-style memo that also takes a position on Bostrom’s preventive governance proposals.
Getting started
0 of 5 done-
Pick a decision-maker and a decision they actually face.
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Gather the facts: what exists, what is proposed, who disagrees.
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Lay out 2–3 realistic options with their pros and cons.
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Recommend one, and say what evidence would change your mind.
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Keep it to two pages and get feedback from someone who disagrees.
All steps done
Share what you made, then try another project. The PDF version has room for notes.
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Stress-test one article of a proposed international AI agreement
MIRI TGT published a draft international agreement to prevent premature superintelligence. Pick one article and ask: how would it be verified, enforced and evaded?
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What would count as an AI “warning shot”?
Will society respond to early AI accidents the way it should? Collect historical warning shots from other technologies and analyse which ones actually changed policy.
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Further reading
- Nuclear Arms Control Verification and Lessons for AI Treaties (opens in a new tab)ReadingMauricio Baker · 2023
- Plans A, B, C, and D for misalignment risk (opens in a new tab)Reading15 min
- AI 2040, Plan A (opens in a new tab)Reading30 min
- Introduction for and Reactions to Plan A (opens in a new tab)ReadingZvi Mowshowitz · Jul 2026
- Confidential AI (opens in a new tab)ReadingAI Futures Project (high-level plans), Intelligence Security Laboratories, MIRI TGT (not much verification), Verifiable Compute Foundation (just starting), some frontier AI companies
Related mentored projects
- Evaluate three theories of victory for AI futures on equal grounds (opens in a new tab)SPARNaci Cankaya · Machine Intelligence Research Institute
- Verification Evidence for Compute Governance: What Inspection Regimes Actually Detect (opens in a new tab)SPARJoel Christoph, Jonas Kgomo · Research Associate, Graduate Programme on Existential Risks to Humanity / Equiano Institute
- Token taxes as a mechanism for reducing AI-driven power concentration (opens in a new tab)SPARLucas Irwin · GovAI (Summer Fellow), Oxford Martin School AI Governance Initiative