I am a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy and a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Oxford.
I was a PhD student in philosophy at NYU from 2016-2018. I have a BPhil in philosophy from Oxford, and a BA in philosophy from Yale.
I blog at Hands and Cities. Favorite posts include:
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Against neutrality about creating happy lives (podcast version here)
Research:
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Is power-seeking AI an existential risk? (video presentation; slides; reviews; google doc version)
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How much computational power does it take to match the human brain? (medium-length summary here)
Audio:
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"Utopia on earth and morality without guilt," on Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg.
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"Creating Utopia," on the Utilitarian Podcast with Gus Docker. Transcript here.
Video:
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Existential Risk from Power-seeking AI (Harvard Effective Altruism Agathon Lecture Series)
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Orienting towards the long-term future (Effective Altruism Global 2017)
I spent the academic year of 2017-18 helping Toby Ord write The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, which is a clear statement of a number of ideas that matter to me: notably, that human history might be just beginning; that the future could be incomprehensibly vast and extraordinary; and that it is extremely important that we do not mess up in a way that destroys this possibility. This New Yorker piece about Toby and the book is also a good summary.
I am also interested in meditation. I've spent over a year of my life on silent meditation retreat, in stretches ranging from a few days to three months.
Email: joseph [dot] k [dot] carlsmith [at] gmail [dot] com
Here is my CV.
Other writing:
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Killing the ants (Portuguese translation here)
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Alienation and meta-ethics (or: is it possible you should maximize helium?)
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In search of benevolence (or: what should you get Clippy for Christmas?)
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