Will we experience an existential catastrophe before we build AGI?

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Will Metaculus predict that artificial intelligence continues to pose a global catastrophic risk?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1538/will-metaculus-predict-that-artificial-intelligence-continues-to-pose-a-global-catastrophic-risk/

Currently, artificial intelligence can outperform humans in a number of narrow domains, such as playing chess and searching data. As artificial intelligence researchers continue to make progress, though, these domains are highly likely to grow in number and breadth over time. Many experts now believe there is a significant chance that a machine superintelligence – a system that can outperform humans at all relevant intelligence tasks – will be developed within the next century, [and possibly much sooner](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1394/will-ai-progress-surprise-us/) . As predictions to [a previous question suggest](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1495/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-global-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-be-due-to-an-artificial-intelligence-failure-mode/), artificial intelligence might pose a global catastrophic risk (defined there as a 10% decrease in the world population in any period of 5 years). When considering how AI might become a risk, experts t...

Will artificial superintelligence precede the achievement of longevity escape velocity (if it is ever achieved)?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4788/will-artificial-superintelligence-precede-the-achievement-of-longevity-escape-velocity-if-it-is-ever-achieved/

[Longevity escape velocity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity_escape_velocity) is a hypothetical situation in which life-extending medicine extends life longer than the time that is passing. For example, in a given year in which longevity escape velocity would be maintained, technological advances would increase life expectancy more than the year that just went by. Will artificial superintelligence precede the achievement of longevity escape velocity (if it is ever achieved)? An anti-aging therapy is said to lead to longevity escape velocity if more than one-half of 70-year-olds who take it within 5 years of its development are still alive after 50 years. For the purposes of this question, the date of development of the therapy is the date in which the therapy is first given to human subjects. This question resolves positively if, before an anti-aging therapy that leads to longevity escape velocity is first developed, an AI achieves generally superhuman performance across virt...

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/578/human-extinction-by-2100/

While the general feeling of most people, especially now that the cold war is (mostly) over, is that the risk of human extinction is extremely small, experts have assigned a significantly higher probability to the event. In 2008 an [informal poll at the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference at the University of Oxford](https://www.webcitation.org/6YxiCAV0p?url=http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/gcr-report.pdf) yielded a median probability of human extinction by 2100 of 19%. Yet, one might want to be cautious when using this result as a good estimate of the true probability of human extinction, as there may be a powerful selection effect at play. Only those who assign a high probability to human extinction are likely to attend the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference in the first place, meaning that the survey was effectively sampling opinions from one extreme tail of the opinion distribution on the subject. Indeed, the conference report itself stated that the findings should be taken 'with a grain o...

If there is an artificial intelligence catastrophe this century, when will it happen?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/2805/if-there-is-an-artificial-intelligence-catastrophe-this-century-when-will-it-happen/

The [Ragnarök Question Series](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=cat:series--ragnarok) asks [whether there will be an AI catastrophe](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1495/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-global-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-be-due-to-an-artificial-intelligence-failure-mode/) . Also interesting is when this catastrophe would occur, especially for its implications in how to best avert such a catastrophe. Given that a catastrophe resulting from an AI-failure-mode occurs before 2100, when will this occur? Resolution will be on the day when it is first true that such a catastrophe (defined as one that claims at least 10% of the human population in any period of 5 years or less) that is principally due to the deployment of AI system(s) has occurred, or ambiguous if no such catastrophe occurs.

Ragnarök Question Series: if an artificial intelligence catastrophe occurs, will it reduce the human population by 95% or more?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/2513/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-an-artificial-intelligence-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-reduce-the-human-population-by-95-or-more/

Currently, artificial intelligence can outperform humans in a number of narrow domains, such as playing chess and searching data. As artificial intelligence researchers continue to make progress, though, these domains are highly likely to grow in number and breadth over time. Many experts now believe there is a significant chance that a machine superintelligence – a system that can outperform humans at all relevant intelligence tasks – will be developed within the next century, and possibly much sooner. In a [2017 survey of artificial intelligence experts](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.08807.pdf), experts were asked about the effects of human level machine intelligence. They assigned a 10% for a bad outcome and 5% for an outcome described as “Extremely Bad (e.g., human extinction).” Although a selection bias, large variance in responses (reflecting vast uncertainty), and the unreliability of subjective opinions mean that these estimates warrant skepticism, they nevertheless suggest that t...

By 2030 the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence will have given up on friendly AI and instead focus on fail-safe mechanisms.

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After an AGI is created, how many months will it be before the first superintelligence?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4123/after-an-agi-is-created-how-many-months-will-it-be-before-the-first-superintelligence/

Futurists have long speculated that upon the arrival of AGI, the first sperintelligence will quickly follow. From I. J. Good, [writing in 1965](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065245808604180), Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. Nick Bostrom wrote in his book Superintelligence (2014), Note that one could think that it will take quite a long time until machines reach the human baseline, or one might be agnostic about how long that will take, and yet have...

Ragnarök Question Series: If a global catastrophe occurs, will it be due to an artificial intelligence failure-mode?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1495/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-global-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-be-due-to-an-artificial-intelligence-failure-mode/

Currently, artificial intelligence can outperform humans in a number of narrow domains, such as playing chess and searching data. As artificial intelligence researchers continue to make progress, though, these domains are highly likely to grow in number and breadth over time. Many experts now believe there is a significant chance that a machine superintelligence – a system that can outperform humans at all relevant intelligence tasks – will be developed within the next century, and possibly much sooner. In a [2017 survey of artificial intelligence experts](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.08807.pdf), the median expert estimated that there is a 50% chance of human-level artificial intelligence by 2062, and after this milestone were reached, respondents reported a 10% chance that superintelligence would be achieved within two years. [Our very own question on the prospect of human-machine intelligence parity by 2040](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/384/human-machine-intelligence-parity-by-2...

Will an oracle superintelligence be developed before a general superintelligence?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3683/will-an-oracle-superintelligence-be-developed-before-a-general-superintelligence/

An oracle ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_control_problem#Oracle), [Lesswrongwiki](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Oracle_AI)) is a theoretical capability-constrained artificial intelligence (AI) limited to answering questions. An oracle would plausibly be easier to safely implement than a [general AI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence), and it may help to solve the safety issues associated with general AI. Therefore, a reasonable case can be made for developing an oracle first, even if a safe general AI seems feasible. However, an oracle would have considerably less (though still large) upside than a general AI, so it may be less appealing to investors. This question will immediately resolve positively if an AI limited to answering questions achieves reliably superhuman performance across virtually all questions of interest before an AI achieves generally superhuman performance across virtually all human activities of interest. If a generally ...

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How many biological humans will be alive on the 31st of December 2300, conditional on there being more than 500M?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/2954/how-many-biological-humans-will-be-alive-on-the-31st-of-december-2300-conditional-on-there-being-more-than-500m/

Long term population development is of great importance in questions about the far future. The United Nations write in a [report from 2004](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/researchcentres/csgr/green/foresight/demography/united_nations_world_population_to_2300.pdf) : In these projections, world population peaks at 9.22 billion in 2075. Population therefore grows slightly beyond the level of 8.92 billion projected for 2050 in the 2002 Revision, on which these projections are based. However, after reaching its maximum, world population declines slightly and then resumes increasing, slowly, to reach a level of 8.97 billion by 2300, not much different from the projected 2050 figure. In this question, it is asked: How many biological humans will be alive on the 31st of December 2300, conditional on there being more than 500M? The resolution comes from the latest report by the United Nations (or a comparable organisation representing the human species) before january 16th, 2300. I...

My net financial worth will be greater than 10 million (2012-inflation adjusted), or enough to indefinitely earn a passive income to provide 100 people with cryonics, (whichever of the two is greater), by 2028

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By 2020, Eliezer Yudkowsky will have given up building friendly AI.

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Will there be a positive transition to a world with radically smarter-than-human artificial intelligence?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4118/will-there-be-a-positive-transition-to-a-world-with-radically-smarter-than-human-artificial-intelligence/

A world with radically smarter-than-human intelligence would probably be very different than the one we live in today. [Bostrom (2003)](https://nickbostrom.com/ethics/ai.html) speculated on the likely outcome following the creation of artificial superintelligence, It is hard to think of any problem that a superintelligence could not either solve or at least help us solve. Disease, poverty, environmental destruction, unnecessary suffering of all kinds: these are things that a superintelligence equipped with advanced nanotechnology would be capable of eliminating. Additionally, a superintelligence could give us indefinite lifespan, either by stopping and reversing the aging process through the use of nanomedicine, or by offering us the option to upload ourselves. A superintelligence could also create opportunities for us to vastly increase our own intellectual and emotional capabilities, and it could assist us in creating a highly appealing experiential world in which we could live lives...

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3020/when-will-an-ai-pass-the-laugh-test/

In [this article](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/what-comes-after-the-turing-test) computer scientist Gary Marcus laid down the gauntlet: ...allow me to propose a Turing Test for the twenty-first century: build a computer program that can watch any arbitrary TV program or YouTube video and answer questions about its content.... no existing program—not Watson, not Goostman, not Siri—can currently come close to doing what any bright, real teenager can do: watch an episode of “The Simpsons,” and tell us when to laugh. For the purposes of this question, assume that a data set has been created based on labeling of at least 100 episodes of a television comedy (obviously without laugh track/studio audience and preferably but not necessarily The Simpsons.) Using at most 25 episodes as part of the training corpus, when will an ML system achieve 90% of human accuracy when tested on 25 other different randomly chosen episodes? Fine print: --- The accuracy metric is unspeci...

There will be a Youtube video with more views (on Youtube) than there will be living humans before 2020.

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Will LessWrong add a button to embed interactive predictions before 2021-07-01?

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Conditional on the AI community learning of pre-AGI catastrophic deceptive misalignment, will the ($ spent on AI alignment research)/($ spent on AI research) ratio increase by more than 50% over the two years following the catastrophe?

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Will someone report to have received a hemispherectomy for the purpose of life extension before 2100?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4969/will-someone-report-to-have-received-a-hemispherectomy-for-the-purpose-of-life-extension-before-2100/

A hemispherectomy [is](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy) a very rare neurosurgical procedure in which a cerebral hemisphere (half of the brain) is removed, disconnected, or disabled. This procedure is used to treat a variety of seizure disorders where the source of the epilepsy is localized to a broad area of a single hemisphere of the brain, notably Rasmussen's encephalitis. [...] Because of the dramatic alteration of brain composition and the inherent risk that hemispherectomies pose, there are criteria that must be met in order for a person to qualify for the procedure. Criteria include no successful control of seizures throughout a variety of drug trials, and a reasonable to high chance of procedural success. One such predictor of success is often the age of the patient. This procedure is almost exclusively performed in children because their brains generally display more neuroplasticity, allowing neurons from the remaining hemisphere to take over the tasks from the l...

Will human brain emulation be the first successful route to human-level digital intelligence?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/372/will-human-brain-emulation-be-the-first-successful-route-to-human-level-digital-intelligence/

In the quest for "strong" Artificial Intelligence, defined here as digital intelligences rivaling or surpassing that of humans, a number of potential path have been discussed. Among them is "brain emulation," in which the physical functioning of a human brain is directly simulated, at some level of detail, in a digital computer. In an interesting recent book, [The Age of Em](https://www.amazon.com/Age-Em-Work-Robots-Earth/dp/0198754620), Robin Hanson explores the potential dynamics of human society assuming such "Ems" can be created, and that this occurs prior to the advent of other forms of strong AI. (See also a [recent post by Hanson](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/11/brains-simpler-than-brain-cells.html) discussing the relative timing of different AI paths.) There is considerable debate about the technological feasibility of such simulation: though there is general (though not universal) agreement that the brain, being a physical system, is amenable to being simulated, the ne...

Ragnarök Question Series: By 2100 will the human population decrease by at least 10% during any period of 5 years?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1493/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-by-2100-will-the-human-population-decrease-by-at-least-10-during-any-period-of-5-years/

It’s dangerous to be alive and risks are everywhere. But not all risks are created equally. Those that are especially large in scope and severe in intensity are global catastrophic risks, which are risks that could inflict serious damage to human well-being on a global scale. Until relatively recently, most global catastrophic risks were natural, such as the supervolcano episodes and asteroidal/cometary impacts that led to mass extinctions millions of years ago. Other natural risks might include a pandemic of naturally occurring disease, non-anthropogenic climate change, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and spontaneous decay of cosmic vacuum state. Humanity has survived these natural existential risks for hundreds of thousands of years; which suggests that it is not any of these that will do us in within the next hundred. By contrast, through technological advances, our species is introducing entirely new kinds of risks, anthropogenic risks, which are man-made threats that have no track r...

Will humanity (essentially) run out of at least one element currently considered "under serious threat" by 2040?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1058/will-humanity-essentially-run-out-of-at-least-one-element-currently-considered-under-serious-threat-by-2040/

In 2008, science fiction author, Robert Silverberg, penned a provocative web essay, [The Death of Galium](https://web.archive.org/web/20080704170435/http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0806/ref.shtml), that predicted that we would collectively run out of several essential, rare elements within a single decade. Per Silverberg: The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany’s University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet’s stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century. Silverberg's dire fears have not (yet!) come to pass, but the [American Chemical Society (ACS)](https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/greenchemistry/re...

Will there be another AI Winter (a period commonly referred to as such) before we develop AGI?

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If a whole human brain is successfully emulated by 2100, what is the maximum number of humans that will be uploaded in any 5-year period?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/2812/if-a-whole-human-brain-is-successfully-emulated-by-2100-what-is-the-maximum-number-of-humans-that-will-be-uploaded-in-any-5-year-period/

Whole Brain Emulation (WBE), often informally called “uploading”, is a proposed technique that involves using a computer to emulate the states and functional dynamics of a brain at a relatively fine‐grained level of detail to produce the same outward behaviour as the original brain. The basic idea is to take a particular brain, scan its structure in detail, and construct a software model of it that is sufficiently faithful to the original that, when run on appropriate hardware, it will behave in essentially the same way as the original brain.[ [1](https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf) ] WBE has been proposed as a path to creating human-level digital intelligence.[ [2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Em) ] An approach to WBE examined in in [Bostrom and Sandberg (2008)](https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf), a comprehensive study on the topic, is one that involves destructive scanning, in which the brain is separated from other tissu...

Robin Hanson: In 2032, less than 50% of cars on the road will completely autonomous. (to be assessed by asking an unbiased expert if the answer is not obvious)

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Will the impact of the Effective Altruism movement be picked up by Google Trends in 2030?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1591/will-the-impact-of-the-effective-altruism-movement-be-picked-up-by-google-trends-in-2030/

Effective Altruism is a philosophy and social movement that uses evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to benefit others. The movement came into being in the late 2000s as a community formed around the groups [Giving What We Can](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/) and [Givewell](https://www.givewell.org/) . Since then, [around 3600 have pledged to donate a substantial percentage of their incomes](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/#our-members-have-done-some-amazing-things) to the world’s most effective charities, [thousands have significantly changed their career path to improve their impact on the world]( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HyELsX9n85D7M1GKxZ1BndxU9nVFLEPH0eh61g2PI4U/edit#gid=0) . Effective Altruism has inspired many to collectively [ donate around $5-10M each year]( http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1e1/ea_survey_2017_series_community_demographics/), has resulted in [$170 million+](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/impact/) moved to effective ch...

Will we need > 3 breakthroughs on a similar level to deep learning to get AGI?

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How many patients will be in cryonic suspension at the Cryonics Institute in 2030?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3478/how-many-patients-will-be-in-cryonic-suspension-at-the-cryonics-institute-in-2030/

The number of cryonics patients in storage at the Cryonics Institute (CI) has been increasing steadily since it was founded in 1976. From 2009 to 2019, [the total number of patients](https://www.cryonics.org/ci-landing/member-statistics/) increased from 95 to 177. How many patients will be in cryonic suspension at the Cryonics Institute in 2030? This question resolves to the largest number of patients in cryonic suspension at CI in 2030, cited in any report published by CI that year which gives such a number. If there is no such report (for any reason) this question resolves ambiguous. A "patient" is here taken to mean any preserved human brain (incl. neuropreservation, whole-body cryopreservation, etc.).

What percentage of people cryopreserved between 2020 and 2050 will be revived by 2200?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4785/what-percentage-of-people-cryopreserved-between-2020-and-2050-will-be-revived-by-2200/

As of 2019, over 400 people have been cryopreserved ([175 at Alcor](https://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/membershipstats.html), [183 at the Cryonics Insitute](https://www.cryonics.org/case-reports/), [71 at KrioRus](https://kriorus.ru/en/cryopreserved%20people)), and many more people are members of cryonics organisations with arrangements to be cryopreserved after their deaths. Cryopreservation currently involves replacing blood with a cryoprotectant and slowly cooling down a body to liquid nitrogen temperatures for long-term storage. The hope is that this preserves enough of the structure of the brain that, with advanced enough future technology, revival will eventually be possible. Chances of revival may also be increasing over time, as [cryopreservation techniques become better](https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html) and the institutional knowledge to get people cryopreserved sooner after death develops. I thus ask to what extent revival will be possible for people preserved in t...

How long would humanity take to rebound from a global catastrophe?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4511/how-long-would-humanity-take-to-rebound-from-a-global-catastrophe/

For reasons why there might ever be fewer than 100M humans, see the [Metaculus Ragnarok series](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=cat:series--ragnarok) . An important question is, if most people die, whether humanity will recover, and how long it would take. Question: If there ever were fewer than 100M humans, how many years would it take for there to be more than 1B humans? Resolution details: ---Only humans in the observable universe count. ---"Humans" are creatures who at least one 2020 Metaculus user would judge are humans if they magically met them.

If human-level artificial intelligence is developed, will World GDP grow by at least 30.0% in any of the subsequent 15 years?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3477/if-human-level-artificial-intelligence-is-developed-will-world-gdp-grow-by-at-least-300-in-any-of-the-subsequent-15-years/

In economist Robin Hanson's 2001 paper [Economic Growth Given Machine Intelligence](http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/aigrow.pdf), he writes A simple exogenous growth model gives conservative estimates of the economic implications of machine intelligence. [...] Without machine intelligence, world product grows at a familiar rate of 4.3% per year, doubling every 16 years, with about 40% of technological progress coming from ordinary computers. With machine intelligence, the (instantaneous) annual growth rate would be 45%, ten times higher, making world product double every 18 months! If the product shares are raised by 20%, and general technology growth is lowered to preserve the 4.4% figure, the new doubling time falls to less than 6 months. This question is conditioned on the arrival of human-level artificial intelligence, as defined by [this Metaculus question](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/384/human-machine-intelligence-parity-by-2040/) . Assume that at some point, a machine is cr...

As of July 1st, 2022, when will top forecasters expect the first Artificial General Intelligence to be developed and demonstrated?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4815/as-of-july-1st-2022-when-will-top-forecasters-expect-the-first-artificial-general-intelligence-to-be-developed-and-demonstrated/

Artificial general intelligence is a hypothetical machine system that has the capacity to learn and perform the same general-purpose reasoning and problem-solving tasks humans can. Judging by [existing](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/384/human-machine-intelligence-parity-by-2040/) [questions](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3479/when-will-the-first-artificial-general-intelligence-system-be-devised-tested-and-publicly-known-of/) on the topic, artificial general intelligence is unlikely to arrive soon, and we will therefore receive little direct feedback on our ability to forecast questions related to its development. One thing we can do to to achieve tighter feedback loops is to make forecasts about future forecasts. These future forecasts will integrate evidence that is currently inaccessible. Forecasts about forecasts inclines us to explicitly think about how our evidence about when we will have artificial general intelligence will likely evolve over time. What will be the ...

Ragnarök Question Series: if a global biological catastrophe occurs, will it reduce the human population by 95% or more?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/2514/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-global-biological-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-reduce-the-human-population-by-95-or-more/

No single disease currently exists that combines the worst-case levels of transmissibility, lethality, resistance to therapies, and global reach. But we know that the worst-case attributes can be realized independently. For example, some diseases exhibit nearly a 100% case fatality ratio in the absence of treatment, such as rabies or septicemic plague. The 1918 flu [has a track record of spreading to virtually every human community worldwide](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2021692) . Chickenpox and HSV-1, [can reportedly reach over 95% of a given population](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18080353) . [An informal survey at the 2008 Oxford Global Catastrophic Risk Conference](https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/reports/2008-1.pdf) asked participants to estimate the chance that disasters of different types would occur before 2100. Participants had a median risk estimate of 0.05% that a natural pandemic would lead to human extinction by 2100, and a median risk estimate of 2% that an “engin...

If cryonics is at some point offered for free, what percentage of Americans will be signed up within 10 years?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4052/if-cryonics-is-at-some-point-offered-for-free-what-percentage-of-americans-will-be-signed-up-within-10-years/

Assume for the purpose of this question that before 2100, some organization or person offers cryonics for free, meaning that all fees and associated costs are waived. There are a few reasons why this might happen, --- A wealthy person or organization begins offering it as a way of attracting people to cryonics. --- The government subsidizes cryonics as an alternative to the expensive [end-of-life care](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-life_care) industry that currently exists. The world population is expected to be [much older](https://ourworldindata.org/age-structure) on average in the near future, which could put strain on governments to cut healthcare costs. Cryonics proponents have historically [given arguments](https://alcor.org/Library/html/cryopreservingeveryone.html) for why they expect cryonics to scale extremely well, which if true, would imply that the cost of signing everyone in the United States up would be relatively cheap per capita. After 10 years of when the offe...

Within the next 1000 years we will discover that the singularity already happened a very long time ago and that we are the AIs that resulted from it.

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Our descendants will colonize millions of star systems within ten thousand years or so. -- Robin Hanson

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Will the human condition change fundamentally before 2100?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1646/will-the-human-condition-change-fundamentally-before-2100/

[Nick Bostrom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Bostrom), philosopher and Founding Director of the [Future of Humanity Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Humanity_Institute) at the University of Oxford, [argues](https://youtu.be/YBAxrR3RBSs) that only two events since the dawn of humanity have fundamentally changed the human condition: the Agricultural Revolution that took place approximately 10,000 years ago, and the Industrial Revolution which took place from roughly 1760-1840. Bostrom states the following: "So what kind of thing would count as a fundamental change in the human condition? "You could argue that if we look back over history, there has really only been two events that have fundamentally changed the human condition, the first being [the Agricultural Revolution some 10,000 or 12,000 years ago in Mesopotamia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution), where we transitioned from being hunter-gatherers, small bands roaming around, to settling int...

Ragnarök Question Series: If a global catastrophe occurs, will it be due to nanotechnology failure-mode?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1501/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-global-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-be-due-to-nanotechnology-failure-mode/

In 1959, Richard Feynman pointed out that nanometre‐scale machines could be built and operated, and that the precision inherent in molecular construction would make it easy to build multiple identical copies. This raised the possibility of manufacturing at ever increasing speeds, in which production systems could rapidly and cheaply increase their productive capacity. This in turn suggested the possibility of destructive runaway self‐replication. As Eric Drexler, a nanotech pioneer, first warned in [Engines of Creation](http://xaonon.dyndns.org/misc/engines_of_creation.pdf) in 1986 (pg. 146), In a mature form, molecular nanotechnology would enable the construction of bacterium-scale self-replicating mechanical robots that can feed on dirt or other organic matter. Such replicators could eat up the biosphere or destroy it by other means such as by poisoning it, burning it, or blocking out sunlight. Plants with ‘leaves’ no more efficient than today’s solar cells could out‐compete real p...

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How many papers on AI ethics and algorithmic bias will be published by the end of 2022?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5892/ai-ethics-and-algo-bias-publications-2022/

The ethics of artificial intelligence is the branch of the ethics of technology specific to machine learning and AI systems. How many papers on AI ethics and algorithmic bias will be published by the end of 2022? This question resolves as the total number of publications on arXiv on 2022-12-31 at 11:59 PM, as per the e-print's "original submission date". Details of the search query For the purpose of this question, AI ethics and algorithmic bias e-prints are those published under Computer Science that contain that contain any of the following key words in "all fields": "AI ethics", "AI fairness", "racial bias", "gender bias", "algorithmic bias" The query should include cross-listed papers (papers listed on other subjects besides Computer Science). The query can be [executed here](https://arxiv.org/search/advanced?terms-0-operator=AND&terms-0-term=%22ai+ethics%22&terms-0-field=all&terms-1-operator=OR&terms-1-term=%22ai+fairness%22&terms-1-field=all&terms-2-operat...

Ragnarök Question Series: if a nuclear catastrophe occurs, will it reduce the human population by 95% or more?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1585/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-nuclear-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-reduce-the-human-population-by-95-or-more/

A nuclear exchange could cause a [nuclear winter](http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockNW2006JD008235.pdf) – a release of black carbon into the atmosphere which would [according to some studies](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2013EF000205), result in the blocking the Sun’s thermal energy. This would lower temperatures regionally and globally for several years, and open up new holes in the ozone layer protecting the Earth from harmful radiation, reduce global precipitation by about 10%, trigger crop failures, and result in widespread food shortages. According to [some models](http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf), the smoke would rapidly engulf the Earth and form a dense stratospheric smoke layer. The smoke from a war fought with strategic nuclear weapons would quickly prevent up to 70% of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Northern Hemisphere and 35% of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Southern Hemisphere...

When will the first Artificial General Intelligence system be devised, tested, and publicly known of? [stronger operationalization]

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5121/when-will-the-first-artificial-general-intelligence-system-be-devised-tested-and-publicly-known-of-stronger-operationalization/

This question is a duplicate of [this one](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3479/when-will-the-first-artificial-general-intelligence-system-be-devised-tested-and-publicly-known-of/) with a stronger operationalization for artificial general intelligence, and including robotic capabilities. I will copy relevant parts of that question to this one. Since the inception of the field, the goal of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research has been to develop a machine-based system that can perform the same general-purpose reasoning and problem-solving tasks humans can. While computers have surpassed humans in many information-processing abilities, this "general" intelligence has remained elusive. AI, and particularly machine learning (ML), is advancing rapidly, with previously human-specific tasks such as image and speech recognition, translation and even driving, now being successfully tackled by narrow AI systems. But there is a stunning diversity of opinion about when general AI may arrive, ...

"by 2030 we should have the capability to upload a person’s consciousness to a computer system"

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Will there be more than 50 prediction questions embedded in LessWrong posts and comments this month?

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Ragnarök Question Series: if a global climate disaster occurs by 2100, will the Earth's human population decline by 95% or more?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1604/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-global-climate-disaster-occurs-by-2100-will-the-earths-human-population-decline-by-95-or-more/

[According to current IPCC estimates](http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf), unmitigated greenhouse emissions are likely to lead to global temperature increases of 2.6ºC-4.8ºC by 2100. If this happened, our planet would become a more precarious place, but it will likely remain mostly habitable. However, [according to some](https://www.givewell.org/shallow/climate-change/extreme-risks), there is also a non-negligible chance that unmitigated emissions will lead to global temperature increases even higher than 4.8ºC. More generally, estimates of temperature increases resulting from greenhouse emissions have a [“fat” right tail](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e-mann/the-fat-tail-of-climate-change-risk_b_8116264.html), meaning that there is a low, but non-negligible chance of very high temperature increases. Hence, there is a non-negligible chance that unmitigated emissions may produce consequences which could be catastrophic for life on Earth. One explanatio...

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The tech will exist and be relatively safe for media to be uploaded directly into the human brain by 2026.

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Will humans have a sustainable off-world presence by 2100?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1432/will-humans-have-a-sustainable-off-world-presence-by-2100/

In the 1970s Gerard K. O’Neill wrote and published his seminal work, [The High Frontier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space#cite_note-3) . In it O’Neill first paints a picture of habitats floating in space, with people living on the insides of cylinders kilometres long, and then describes how one could accomplish this from an engineering perspective with the Space Shuttle, then still in the planning stages. The Shuttle turned out to be more expensive and less reusable than it was optimistically lauded to be, but it stands to reason: where are the space settlements? Certainly not in low earth orbit. But they don’t have to be. [What once pushed the envelope of the technically feasible is now well established as doable](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1434/when-will-india-send-their-first-own-astronauts-to-space/) . The [Mir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir) was an initially Soviet, later Russian space station from 1986–1996, crewed for almost t...

Ragnarök Question Series: If a global catastrophe occurs, will it be due to biotechnology or bioengineered organisms?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1502/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-global-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-be-due-to-biotechnology-or-bioengineered-organisms/

No single disease currently exists that combines the worst-case levels of transmissibility, lethality, resistance to therapies, and global reach. But we know that the worst-case attributes can be realized independently. For example, some diseases exhibit nearly a 100% case fatality ratio in the absence of treatment, such as rabies or septicemic plague. The 1918 flu [has a track record of spreading to virtually every human community worldwide](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2021692) . Chickenpox and HSV-1, [can reportedly reach over 95% of a given population](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18080353) . The past decades have seen rapid advances in biotechnology, in part due to the falling costs of gene sequencing and synthesis. Improvements in ease-of-use of certain specific kinds of biotechnology bring increased concerns about biological risks. Gene synthesisers have the capacity to turn digital sequence data into physical genetic sequences, enabling individuals to create virus...

When will the odds ratio of Metaculus' community prediction of the chance of AI catastrophe by 2100 either half or double from its value on 2019-08-21?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3040/when-will-the-odds-ratio-of-metaculus-community-prediction-of-the-chance-of-ai-catastrophe-by-2100-either-half-or-double-from-its-value-on-2019-08-21/

As of 2019-08-21, Metaculus' community prediction gives a probability of 0.38 [that there will be a global catastrophe reducing the population by at least 10%](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1493/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-by-2100-will-the-human-population-decrease-by-at-least-10-during-any-period-of-5-years/), and a probability of of 0.29 [that this catastrophe will be due to an AI failure mode](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1495/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-global-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-be-due-to-an-artificial-intelligence-failure-mode/), for a probability of 0.1102, corresponding to an [odds ratio](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Odds_ratio) of 0.124. Halving this odds ratio corresponds to a probability of 0.0583, and doubling this odds ratio corresponds to a probability of 0.1985. The Metaculus prediction leaving this range would represent a substantial increase in the community's confidence on whether or not AI is a major risk. This may either be be...

What will the price of neuropreservation be at Alcor in 2030?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5585/neuropreservation-price-at-alcor-2030/

From [Alcor](https://www.alcor.org/library/case-for-neuropreservation/), Neuropreservation, quite simply, is low temperature preservation of the brain of a terminal patient. All efforts in neuropreservation are devoted to the singular purpose of preserving the brain, and only the brain, in the best possible condition allowed by present technology. The disposition of other tissue only matters inasmuch it impacts upon the condition of the brain. As of writing this question, Alcor [charges a minimum](https://www.alcor.org/docs/alcor-form-schedule-a-required-costs-and-cryopreservation-fund-minimums.pdf) of $80,000 for neuropreservation, often paid with life insurance. For people purchasing life insurance for cryonics, it's important to ensure that the funding is above the minimum amount required for preservation. However, the price has changed in the past. Therefore, it's critical that cryonics enthusiasts anticipate future price changes, so that they can afford the procedure when they nee...

How many years after the silver Turing Test is passed will an AGI system be developed?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4264/how-many-years-after-the-silver-turing-test-is-passed-will-an-agi-system-be-developed/

Given the public disagreement of expert opinion on AI timelines, seen for example [here](http://www.parlonsfutur.com/blog/the-fascinating-facebook-debate-between-yann-lecun-stuart-russel-and-yoshua), there is a need to establish a credible track-record of accurate forecasting in the lead-up to the development of AGI. Oren Etzioni, head of the Allen AI institute, recently published an [article](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/25/906083/artificial-intelligence-destroy-civilization-canaries-robot-overlords-take-over-world-ai/) on identifying 'canaries' which will presage the imminent development of AGI. He proposes that limited versions of the Turing Test could present a natural canary. This question's resolution will be determined by the number of years between the positive resolution of two other metaculus questions: the silver [Turing Test](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/73/will-the-silver-turing-test-be-passed-by-2026/) prediction and [AGI](https://www.metaculus.com/que...

What is the likelihood ratio of being revived before 2200 if one was preserved by Alcor vs. the Cryonics Institute while both were active?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5300/revival-chance-at-alcor-vs-cryonics-institute/

As of the time of writing this question, the two major providers of cryopreservation in the US are [Alcor](https://www.alcor.org/), with [181 patients and 1,317 members](https://www.alcor.org/library/alcor-membership-statistics/), and the [Cryonics Institute](https://www.cryonics.org/), with [177 patients and 1,859 members](https://www.cryonics.org/ci-landing/member-statistics/) . These organisations might differ in the chance of reviving their patients if the initial quality of cryopreservations is higher in one or the other, or if one organisation is likely to last longer than the other, or if when revival becomes possible one is better able to arrange this than the other. What is the likelihood ratio of being revived before 2200 if one was preserved by Alcor vs. the Cryonics Institute while both were active? If no patients from Alcor or the Cryonics Insitute are revived, this resolves ambiguously. If only patients from Alcor are revived, this resolves above the upper end of the sca...

Will there be a major nuclear accident before 2030?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/6378/major-nuclear-accident-before-2030/

previous Metaculus questions: --- [Will there be a major nuclear or radiological accident before 1 January 2022?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/2512/will-there-be-a-major-nuclear-or-radiological-accident-before-1-january-2022/) The [International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale) (INES) was introduced in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in order to enable prompt communication of safety-significant information in case of nuclear accidents. The scale is intended to be logarithmic, similar to the moment magnitude scale that is used to describe the comparative magnitude of earthquakes. Each increasing level represents an accident approximately ten times more severe than the previous level. Compared to earthquakes, where the event intensity can be quantitatively evaluated, the level of severity of a man-made disaster, such as a nuclear accident, is more subject to interpretation. Because of the ...

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By 2030, will C. elegans be uploaded to the satisfaction of top computational neuroscientists?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4034/by-2030-will-c-elegans-be-uploaded-to-the-satisfaction-of-top-computational-neuroscientists/

From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caenorhabditis_elegans), Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living, transparent nematode, about 1 mm in length, that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. [...] In 1963, Sydney Brenner proposed research into C. elegans primarily in the area of neuronal development. In 1974, he began research into the molecular and developmental biology of C. elegans, which has since been extensively used as a model organism. It was the first multicellular organism to have its whole genome sequenced, and as of 2019, is the only organism to have its connectome (neuronal "wiring diagram") completed. In 2011 the project [OpenWorm](http://openworm.org/) began the ambitious [goal](http://docs.openworm.org/en/latest/modeling/) to "build the world's first virtual organism-- an in silico implementation of a living creature-- for the purpose of achieving an understanding of the events and mechanisms of living cells." More generally...

Qualia Research Institute Question Series: Will Psilocybin be a clinically approved treatment for end-of-life anxiety by 2027?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1385/qualia-research-institute-question-series-will-psilocybin-be-a-clinically-approved-treatment-for-end-of-life-anxiety-by-2027/

This is the second in a [three-part series](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=cat:series--qualia-research-institute) of questions suggested by the [Qualia Research Institute](https://qualiaresearchinstitute.org/), with particular thanks to Andrés Gómez Emilsson, whom you can find blogging at the always interesting [QualiaComputing.com](https://qualiacomputing.com/) Psilocybin, the active compound that gives magic mushrooms their magic, is classified as a Schedule 1 drug by the FDA, making legal research very time-consuming and expensive. Like MDMA, it is a psychedelic drug that has well-documented effects on a number of behavioral disorders, and yet is categorized by the government as a highly addictive, unsafe substance with no conceivable medicinal use. It is also in the public domain, and therefore virtually impossible to profit from. Despite the fact that academics must pay over [13 times the price of the drug as its sold on the street,](https://qz.com/1235963/scientists...

What will be the longest verified human lifespan on record on January 1 2050?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1628/what-will-be-the-longest-verified-human-lifespan-on-record-on-january-1-2050/

As of 2018, the record for longest verified human lifespan is held by Jeanne Louise Calment of Arles, France. She lived from 21 February 1875 to 4 August 1997, for a term of 122 years, 164 days. She has held the record for longest confirmed human lifespan since 12 May 1990, was the first human ever to have been confirmed to have lived to the age of 116 years, and is the only human confirmed to have ever lived beyond 120 years. Calment reportedly remained mentally intact until the end of her life, and the New York Times reported that she had been in good health, though almost blind and deaf, as recently as a month before her death. She died of unspecified causes. The oldest verified person currently alive, as of 8 December 2018, is Kane Tanaka of Japan. She was born on 2 January 1903 and at time of question writing is 115 years, 338 days old. If she is still alive on January 1 2050, she will be 146 years, 11 months, 30 days old. Here are the lists of oldest [verified people ever](http...

If there is a biotechnological or bioengineered organism catastrophe this century, when will it happen?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3023/if-there-is-a-biotechnological-or-bioengineered-organism-catastrophe-this-century-when-will-it-happen/

The [Ragnarök Question Series](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=cat:series--ragnarok) asks whether there will be a [biotechnological catastrophe](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1502/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-global-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-be-due-to-biotechnology-or-bioengineered-organisms/), for example from an engineered virus or a gene drive targeted on humans. Since biotechnology is becoming more advanced and cheaper as time goes on, potentially faster than humanity's abilities to prevent pandemics, it is plausible that the time of greatest risk from bioengineering will be in the future. Given that a catastrophe resulting from a biotechnology or bioengineered organisms occurs before 2100, when will this occur? Resolution will be on the day when it is first true that such a catastrophe (defined as one that claims at least 10% of the human population in any period of 5 years or less) that is principally due to the deployment of biotechnologies or bioeng...

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4055/will-the-first-agi-be-based-on-deep-learning/

The Deep Learning Book, which is considered by many to be the best reference textbook on the topic, [introduces deep learning](https://www.deeplearningbook.org/contents/intro.html), This book is about a solution to [fuzzy ill-defined problems]. This solution is to allow computers to learn from experience and understand the world in terms of a hierarchy of concepts, with each concept defined through its relation to simpler concepts. By gathering knowledge from experience, this approach avoids the need for human operators to formally specify all the knowledge that the computer needs. The hierarchy of concepts enables the computer to learn complicated concepts by building them out of simpler ones. If we draw a graph showing how these concepts are built on top of each other, the graph is deep, with many layers. For this reason,we call this approach to AI deep learning Paul Christiano [has written](https://ai-alignment.com/prosaic-ai-control-b959644d79c2) that future AGI might be based on de...

Will an AI system do credibly well on a full math SAT exam by 2025?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/512/will-an-ai-system-do-credibly-well-on-a-full-math-sat-exam-by-2025/

Humans have devised many ways of assessing other humans' intelligence, and forcing people to participate in such measures. University entrance exams are one of the most familiar, inflicted on countless high school students each year as standardized measures of academic competence and promise. Recently, these exams have begun the target of AI and machine learning projects. According to a [report by Engadget](https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/16/japanese-ai-tokyo-university-fail/), Japan’s National Institute of Informatics had been working on an AI since 2011 with the final objective of passing the entrance exam for the University of Tokyo, tentatively by March 2022. However, a recent [report](https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/japanese-artificial-intelligence-gives-up-on-university-of-tokyo-admissions-exam/) has revealed that the institute will be terminating the project because of its AI's inability to fully understand the broad context of the entrance exam questions. More recently...

When will the number of people in cryopreservation preserved before 2019 fall to less than 50% of the current value?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3333/when-will-the-number-of-people-in-cryopreservation-preserved-before-2019-fall-to-less-than-50-of-the-current-value/

As of 2019-01-01, 411 people had been cryopreserved at various organisations: ---165 at Alcor ([list](https://www.alcor.org/cases.html)) ---173 at the Cryonics Institute ([list](https://www.cryonics.org/case-reports/)) ---66 at KrioRus ([list](http://kriorus.ru/en/cryopreserved%20people)) ---7 at Oregon Cryonics ([list](http://oregoncryo.com/caseReports.html)) For a total of 411. However, it seems very unlikely that they will stay in cryopreservation indefinitely: they could be reuscitated one day (as they presumably hoped), but the cryonics organisations could also fail at preserving them (see the early cryonics organisation [The Cryonics Society of California](https://hpluspedia.org/wiki/Cryonics_organisations#Cryonics_Society_of_California)). To determine when this will happen, this question asks: When will the number of people in cryopreservation, who were preserved before 2019, fall to 50% of the current number, i.e. to 205? Resolution details: --- This question only consider...

Before 1 January 2050, will any human cryonically preserved for at least 1 year be successfully revived?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1626/before-1-january-2050-will-any-human-cryonically-preserved-for-at-least-1-year-be-successfully-revived/

As of 2014, around 250 legally dead people in the United States were in cryonic preservation. At least 1,500 people around the world have active plans to join them in cryopreservation in an attempt to thwart (or at least delay) permanent death by freezing (or more technically 'vitrifying') their corpses after their legal death. Many of these 'cryopatients' have had their whole bodies preserved; others have opted to have only a cheaper neuropreservation. You can probably guess what that means. For more information on the current state of the art in cryonics, you can visit [Alcor's website](https://alcor.org/Library/html/vitrification.html), which is one of the most prominent organisations in the field. This question asks: will any 'patients' who have been in cryonic preservation for at least one full year before 2050 be successfully revived before 1 January 2050? For the purposes of this question, a revived patient must be determined by at least three recognized medical experts (M.D. o...

When will the average survival rate of all cancers exceed 75%?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1654/when-will-the-average-survival-rate-of-all-cancers-exceed-75/

Every sixth death in the world is due to cancer, making it the [second leading cause of death](http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(17)32152-9.pdf) (second only to cardiovascular diseases). In 2016, 8.9 million people are estimated to have died from the various forms of cancer. The [Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation](http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool) put relatively small error margins around this global figure: the lower and upper estimates extend from 8.75 to 9.1 million. As of 2013 in the United States, the mean 5-year relative survival rate of all cancers (for both sexes) [was 69.2%](https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#cancer-survival-rates) . As you can see from this chart by [Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#cancer-survival-rates), the survival rate has been steadily increasing. For example, in 1977 the figure was 48.9% When will the mean 5-year relative survival rate of all cancers for both sexes in the United States e...

If alien life is discovered in the Solar System before 2050, which place will be the natural environment of the first extraterrestrial (Solar) life-form of which there is conclusive evidence?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/593/if-alien-life-is-discovered-in-the-solar-system-before-2050-which-place-will-be-the-natural-environment-of-the-first-extraterrestrial-solar-life-form-of-which-there-is-conclusive-evidence/

[This question](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3834/will-any-conclusive-evidence-for-extraterrestrial-life-past-or-present-be-discovered-within-our-solar-system-by-2050/) asks whether conclusive evidence for extraterrestrial life will be found within our Solar System. As specified in that question, the extraterrestrial life must not have been put in place as a result of human activity. Conditional to a positive resolution, we ask where the organisms (under natural conditions, no probes moving them, etc.) live or lived. We consider the most commonly discussed options, and a few other possibilities. 1--Venus. 2--Mars. 3--Europa. 4--Ganymede. 5--Another moon of Jupiter. 6--Enceladus. 7--Titan. 8--Another moon of Saturn. 9--A dwarf planet. 10-An asteroid. 11-Another place in the Solar System. Resolution is ambiguous if [this question](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3834/will-any-conclusive-evidence-for-extraterrestrial-life-past-or-present-be-discovered-within-our-sol...

Will longevity escape velocity follow the development of effective life extending therapies?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3795/will-longevity-escape-velocity-follow-the-development-of-effective-life-extending-therapies/

[Longevity escape velocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity_escape_velocity) is a hypothetical situation in which life extending medicine extends life longer than the time that is passing. For example, in a given year in which longevity escape velocity would be maintained, technological advances would increase life expectancy more than the year that just went by. Assume for the purpose of this question that before 2100, a therapy is developed which at least two peer reviewed published scientific articles report extends the average human expectancy at 70 years old by at least 4 years. (In America, the current [life expectancy from 70](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html) is about 15.5 years.) A "therapy" cannot be a recommendation to diet or exercise. However, a therapy can be a prescription drug taken regularly, a combination of drugs, a series of surgeries, or any other such procedure that is not currently a standard medical recommendation for 70 year olds. For the th...

Will OpenAI reach its profit cap for the first round of investors by 2035?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4873/will-openai-reach-its-profit-cap-for-the-first-round-of-investors-by-2035/

In 2019 OpenAI [launched](https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/) OpenAI LP, a new “capped-profit” company that allows us to rapidly increase our investments in compute and talent while including checks and balances to actualize our mission. The profit cap was intended to ensure that the company did not put profits before its humanitarian mission: The fundamental idea of OpenAI LP is that investors and employees can get a capped return if we succeed at our mission, which allows us to raise investment capital and attract employees with startup-like equity. But any returns beyond that amount—and if we are successful, we expect to generate orders of magnitude more value than we’d owe to people who invest in or work at OpenAI LP—are owned by the original OpenAI Nonprofit entity. [...] Returns for our first round of investors are capped at 100x their investment (commensurate with the risks in front of us), and we expect this multiple to be lower for future rounds as we make further progress. If...

"At least one human alive in the year 2000 will still be alive in 2150."

https://elicit.org/binary?binaryQuestions.search="At%20least%20one%20human%20alive%20in%20the%20year%202000%20will%20still%20be%20alive%20in%202150."&binaryQuestions.sortBy=popularity&limit=20&offset=0

When will the first Artificial General Intelligence system be devised, tested, and publicly known of?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3479/when-will-the-first-artificial-general-intelligence-system-be-devised-tested-and-publicly-known-of/

Since the inception of the field, the goal of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research has been to develop a machine-based system that can perform the same general-purpose reasoning and problem-solving tasks humans can. While computers have surpassed humans in many information-processing abilities, this "general" intelligence has remained elusive. AI, and particularly machine learning (ML), is advancing rapidly, with previously human-specific tasks such as image and speech recognition, translation and even driving, now being successfully tackled by narrow AI systems. But there is a stunning diversity of opinion about when general AI may arrive, according to published expert surveys. For example [this study](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.06906.pdf) finds 50% of AI researchers accord a 50% probability to "High level machine intelligence" (HLMI) by 2040, while 20% say that 50% probability will not be reached until 2100 or later. Similarly, [this survey](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.08807.pdf) fi...

Will humans (at least one) leave the solar system within 10 years after First Contact?

https://elicit.org/binary?binaryQuestions.search=Will%20humans%20(at%20least%20one)%20leave%20the%20solar%20system%20within%2010%20years%20after%20First%20Contact?&binaryQuestions.sortBy=popularity&limit=20&offset=0

Before reaching AGI, will we hit a point where we can no longer improve AI capabilities by scaling because we are unable to continue scaling?

https://elicit.org/binary?binaryQuestions.search=Before%20reaching%20AGI,%20will%20we%20hit%20a%20point%20where%20we%20can%20no%20longer%20improve%20AI%20capabilities%20by%20scaling%20because%20we%20are%20unable%20to%20continue%20scaling?&binaryQuestions.sortBy=popularity&limit=20&offset=0

How many people will be born in the United States in the year 2021?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3883/how-many-people-will-be-born-in-the-united-states-in-the-year-2021/

The number of people born per year in the US has slightly decreased over the past decade. In 2010, 3,999,386 people were born in the US. For comparison, there were an estimated 3,791,712 births in 2018, according to the official [report](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_13-508.pdf) . One reason why the number of births in 2021 in particular is of interest is the coronavirus crisis. Some commentators have suggested that couples who are forced to spend time at home during quarantine may be more likely to have children, which would increase the birth rate. This however remains to be seen. Resolution criteria: This question will resolve when a US government agency, most likely the National Center for Health Statistics, releases a final estimate of the total number of live births for all US states and territories between January 1 and December 31, 2021. The report will likely not be published until late 2022, which is why this question is expected to resolve by 2023. (E.g. t...

Ragnarök Question Series: If a global catastrophe occurs, will it be due to nuclear war?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1494/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-global-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-be-due-to-nuclear-war/

The invention of nuclear weapons gave humanity the technical capacity to cause devastation on a hitherto unseen scale. Although there have been no nuclear attacks since the Second World War, we have come close to inadvertent and intentional nuclear war on a number of occasions. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two nuclear superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. U.S. president John F. Kennedy estimated the odds of nuclear war at "somewhere between one out of three and even". Twenty events that might be considered ‘near-miss’ incidents – incidents that could potentially have resulted in unintended nuclear detonation or explosion – [have been reported in declassified documents](https://futureoflife.org/background/nuclear-close-calls-a-timeline/) . There are potentially more ‘near-misses’ that have remained classified and concealed. Moreover...

How many excess deaths will the United States experience during COVID-19 (March 8th 2020 through December 31st 2021)?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5943/us-excess-covid-19-deaths/

Assessing [excess mortality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_displacement) is a standard technique for determining the mortality effect of a disease outbreak that does not rely on accurate reporting of cases of disease. It involves estimating the number of deaths that would have occured using historical trends, then comparing that to the number of deaths observed. Research has shown that in the case of COVID-19, [many cases are undetected](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7275155/), which can result in an undercount of COVID derived mortality. As of December 12th, 2020, [the CDC estimates](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm) 352,650 excess deaths during the period of Mar 8th-Dec 12th. How many excess deaths will the United States experience during COVID-19 (March 8th 2020 through December 31st 2021)? This question resolves based on the excess deaths reported by the CDC for the period of March 8th 2020 to December 31st, 2021 on or before Feb...

Ragnarök Question Series: If a global catastrophe occurs, will it be due to either human-made climate change or geoengineering?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1500/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-question-series-if-a-global-catastrophe-occurs-will-it-be-due-to-either-human-made-climate-change-or-geoengineering/

[According to current IPCC estimates](http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf), unmitigated greenhouse emissions are likely to lead to global temperature increases of 2.6ºC-4.8ºC by 2100. If this happened, there’d likely be significant humanitarian harms, including more severe weather, food crises, and the spread of infectious diseases which would disproportionately affect the world’s worst off. Moreover, the [estimated humanitarian impacts of climate changes are likely to be highly nonlinear](https://www.givewell.org/shallow/climate-change/extreme-risks) : marginal temperature increases are expected to cause more damage at already-increased temperatures (i.e. going from 3ºC to 4ºC is expected to be significantly worse than going from 1ºC to 2ºC). [According to some](https://www.givewell.org/shallow/climate-change/extreme-risks), there is also a non-negligible chance — perhaps around 10% — that unmitigated emissions will lead to global temperature increases even h...

How much will Open Philanthropy grant in their focus area of Potential Risks from Advanced Artificial Intelligence in 2021?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/6091/open-phil-grants-to-ai-safety-in-2021/

One of [Open Philanthropy](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/) 's focus areas for making grants is reducing the chances of a [global catastrophic risk from advanced artificial intelligence](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/potential-risks-advanced-artificial-intelligence) . In previous years, the total amounts granted were: ---2020: $14,210,367 ---2019: $63,234,500 ([including a $55,000,000 grant to found the Center for Security and Emerging Technology](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/georgetown-university-center-security-and-emerging-technology)) ---2018: $4,160,392 ---2017: $43,222,473 ([including a $30,000,000 grant of general support to OpenAI](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/potential-risks-advanced-artificial-intelligence/openai-general-support)) ---2016: $7,749,985 ---2015: $1,186,000 ([to the Future of Life Institute](Future of Life Institute)) How much will Open Philanthropy grant in their fo...

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3517/will-there-be-a-global-thermonuclear-war-by-2070/

Weapons in which the energy is provided by nuclear fission or fusion have only twice in history been detonated outside of a controlled test environment, in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events in World War II. Since then, the world has nearly gone to nuclear war as a result of international conflict (during the Cuban Missile Crisis) and by accident. (Indeed, there have been a number of narrowly-averted accidental nuclear detonations. See [this timeline](http://futureoflife.org/background/nuclear-close-calls-a-timeline/) for a sobering look at how close we have come.) This question (which any sane person will hope resolves negatively) regards the probability that a nuclear war will occur by Jan 1, 2070. (Different questions address this separately, but none directly.) There is a great paucity of public and useful estimates of this probability. See for example [this paper](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3137081) for an outline of considerations (but no bottom-line numbe...

What will the necessary computational power to replicate human mental capability turn out to be?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/2646/what-will-the-necessary-computational-power-to-replicate-human-mental-capability-turn-out-to-be/

A major uncertainty in understanding some timeline estimates for high-level AI is in estimating the minimal computational power necessary to perform the operations that the human brain does. Estimates in the literature (see appendix A on p. 84 of [this paper](http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf) for a compilation) range from to FLOPS following a variety of methodologies. (For a comparison, the Landauer limit at 20 C is about bit erasures per second. However, the author has no clear idea how to convert between bit erasures and FLOPS.) This huge range will probably eventually be narrowed down to within an order-of-magnitude or two, and we ask for that number here. Assume that by 2075 there is either (a) a full software emulation of a human brain that can duplicate the basic functionality of a typical adult human of average intelligence; or (b) there is an AI system that can pass a full "strong" Turing test (i.e. the interview is long, adversarial, and include sens...

By 2025, will laws be in place requiring that AI systems that emulate humans must reveal to people that they are AI?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/2788/by-2025-will-laws-be-in-place-requiring-that-ai-systems-that-emulate-humans-must-reveal-to-people-that-they-are-ai/

Cross-posted from [ai.metaculus](http://ai.metaculus.com) . Originally sourced from [Science Bets](http://sciencebets.org/one_sided_predictions.html) . As AI gets more powerful, it is likely that systems that can "pass a Turing test" and deceive people into believing that the AI is human will become available and controversial. For example, the Google Duplex bot courted controversy with its extremely accurate mimicking of a human's voice, dialogue, and cadence. Public backlash prompted Google to [announce that the system would always first identify itself as a bot](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-10/google-grapples-with-horrifying-reaction-to-uncanny-ai-tech) . By 2025, will there be laws in place in a country requiring that AI systems that emulate humans must reveal to people that they use AI? Related Questions: [When will the first law concerning artificial intelligence be passed in the US?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/418/when-will-the-first-law-concerning-a...

“No human will set his or her foot on Mars and return safely to earth before 2050.”

https://elicit.org/binary?binaryQuestions.search=“No%20human%20will%20set%20his%20or%20her%20foot%20on%20Mars%20and%20return%20safely%20to%20earth%20before%202050.”&binaryQuestions.sortBy=popularity&limit=20&offset=0

Will a single AGI or AGI project achieve a decisive strategic advantage?

https://elicit.org/binary?binaryQuestions.search=Will%20a%20single%20AGI%20or%20AGI%20project%20achieve%20a%20decisive%20strategic%20advantage?&binaryQuestions.sortBy=popularity&limit=20&offset=0

In 2031, will at least 90% of Open Philanthropy Project grant money be directed using effective altruist principles?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4677/in-2031-will-at-least-90-of-open-philanthropy-project-grant-money-be-directed-using-effective-altruist-principles/

[The Open Philanthropy Project](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/) makes charitable grants based on what could be described as [effective altruist principles](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/vision-and-values) : "global humanitarianism", "risk tolerance and patience", and "action in the face of humanity". More broadly, the justification for a grant could be considered to fall under "effective altruist principles" if it is made due to a belief that it represents among the best uses of money for improving the world, without regard to favoring a particular group, nation, species, etc., and without regard to the grantmaker's personal connection to or feelings about the cause. In the year 2031, will at least 90% of Open Philanthropy Project grants, on a dollar-weighted basis, be directed according to these principles? The question can be judged using Open Phil's grant writups ([example](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity/center-for-population...

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1394/will-ai-progress-surprise-us/

What is the likelihood of discontinuous progress around the development of Human Level Machine Intelligence (i.e. machines that can accomplish a wide range of important tasks at least as good as human experts)? Discontinuity in progress occurs when a particular technological advance pushes some progress metric substantially above what would be expected based on extrapolating past progress. If AI progress is unusually lumpy, i.e., arriving in unusually fewer larger packages rather than in the usual many smaller packages, then future progress might arrive faster than we would expect by simply looking at past progress. Moreover, if one AI team finds a big lump, it might jump way ahead of the other teams. According to [AI Impacts](https://aiimpacts.org/likelihood-of-discontinuous-progress-around-the-development-of-agi/), discontinuity on the path to AGI, lends itself to: <li> A party gaining decisive strategic advantage </li><li> A single important ‘deployment’ event </li><li> Other very s...

Will humans continually pursue all simple yet powerful changes to our AIs?

https://elicit.org/binary?binaryQuestions.search=Will%20humans%20continually%20pursue%20all%20simple%20yet%20powerful%20changes%20to%20our%20AIs?&binaryQuestions.sortBy=popularity&limit=20&offset=0

How many e-prints on AI Safety, Interpretability or Explainability will be published on arXiv from 2021 through 2026?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5899/ai-safety--other-2021-through-2026/

This question is part of the Maximum Likelihood Round of the [Forecasting AI Progress Tournament](https://www.metaculus.com/ai-progress-tournament/) . You can view all other [questions in this round here](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=contest:ml-round) . [arXiv](http://arxiv.org) is a repository of electronic preprints approved for posting after moderation, but not full peer review. It consists of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, electrical engineering, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, mathematical finance and economics, which can be accessed online. Many machine learning articles will be posted on arXiv before publication. In theoretical computer science and machine learning, over 60% of published papers have arXiv e-prints [(Sutton et al. 2017)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.05225.pdf) . AI Safety refers to a field aimed at developing techniques for designing AI systems that do not display unintended and harmful behav...

Before reaching AGI, will we hit a point where we can no longer improve AI capabilities by scaling because the increase in AI capabilities from scaling plateaus?

https://elicit.org/binary?binaryQuestions.search=Before%20reaching%20AGI,%20will%20we%20hit%20a%20point%20where%20we%20can%20no%20longer%20improve%20AI%20capabilities%20by%20scaling%20because%20the%20increase%20in%20AI%20capabilities%20from%20scaling%20plateaus?&binaryQuestions.sortBy=popularity&limit=20&offset=0

Will there be at least 200 companies developing technologies to defeat aging by 2025?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3460/will-there-be-at-least-200-companies-developing-technologies-to-defeat-aging-by-2025/

In a publicly available spreadsheet, accessible [here](http://agingbiotech.info/companies/), Karl Pfleger has maintained a list of for-profit companies that are confirmed to be working to slow or reverse aging in humans. His criterion for including a company is outlined [here](http://agingbiotech.info/about/what_counts_as_aging.html), and only includes those companies that aim to deliver a product that will undo or slow down molecular damage from aging. Anti-aging cosmetic companies do not count by this criterion. As of January 6th, 2020, there are 126 companies listed in the spreadsheet, but progress has been rapid in recent years. More companies were created from 2016-2018 than were created in the entire period listed before that, from 2009-2015. If growth continues at its current pace, then the number of companies will surpass 200 by 2025. However, if the number does not reach 200, this would imply that growth must have slowed down at some point. This question resolves positively if...

Some modes of the Large Hadron collider will never be reached and by 2025 the scientific community will debate in a peer reviewed physics journal with >median impact that this is due to the anthropic principle combined with the danger of those modes.

https://elicit.org/binary?binaryQuestions.search=Some%20modes%20of%20the%20Large%20Hadron%20collider%20will%20never%20be%20reached%20and%20by%202025%20the%20scientific%20community%20will%20debate%20in%20a%20peer%20reviewed%20physics%20journal%20with%20>median%20impact%20that%20this%20is%20due%20to%20the%20anthropic%20principle%20combined%20with%20the%20danger%20of%20those%20modes.&binaryQuestions.sortBy=popularity&limit=20&offset=0

Drake's Equation 5th parameter f_i: On what fraction of habitable planets with life does intelligence evolve?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1341/drakes-equation-5th-parameter-f_i/

This is the fifth question in [a series](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=cat:series--fermi-paradox) estimating input parameters for Drake's equation, inspired by a [recent paper,](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf) on the Fermi paradox. The first question in the series, with more explanation, [is here](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1337) The model in question uses probability distributions over seven input parameters. In this case we will be addressing the fifth parameter in Drake's Equation, . It is the fraction of life-bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges. This is pretty ill-defined but for our purposes we shall define intelligent life as a type capable of (a) symbolic representation and communication of a description of actions and objects, i.e. language, and (b) use of tools. Under this definition on Earth Humans would count as well as probably several type of nonhuman primates, many cetaceans, and some types of birds. There being no obvious sourc...

When will the first person that has been cryopreserved for more than 1 year be resuscitated or uploaded?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3331/when-will-the-first-person-that-has-been-cryopreserved-for-more-than-1-year-be-resuscitated-or-uploaded/

Developing reuscitation technology is perhaps the most integral part of making cryonics viable, but its feasability is highly debated and subject to speculation. And since cryonics organisations can fail and thaw the preserved bodies, it would be better if such technology would be developed earlier rather than later. To find out when such technology will be developed, this question asks: When will the first person that has been in cryopreservation for more than 1 year be resuscitated or uploaded, conditional on this occurring before 1. January 2200? For the purposes of this question, a revived patient must be determined by at least three recognized medical experts (M.D. or PhD in Biology, Neuroscience or equivalent level of education), each of whom is independent of the cryonics organisation responsible for the patient, to be conscious, alert and responsive to questions for at least 12 hours at some point within a year and a day after midnight on the date that the attempt to revive the...

What percentage of US residents will be aged 100 years or older on January 1 2050?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1630/what-percentage-of-us-residents-will-be-aged-100-years-or-older-on-january-1-2050/

We have a number of questions regarding possible achievements in life extension, but none that measure the effect these achievements might have on a large cohort of people. In 2005, the US Census Bureau estimated the country would have 114,000 centenarians by the year 2010. The actual number reported in the 2010 census was less than half that amount at exactly 53,364 people, or approximately 0.0173% of the population at the time. As of 2014, [estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db233.pdf), place the number of American centenarians at approximately 72,000, roughly 0.022% of the population at the time. This question asks: what percentage of US residents will be aged 100 years or older on January 1 2050, according to data released either by national statistical authorities such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Center for Health Statistics or other credible independent statisticians?

Drake's Equation 6th parameter f_c: What fraction of planets with intelligent life are capable of interstellar communication?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1342/drakes-equation-6th-parameter-f_c/

This is the sixth question in [a series](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=cat:series--fermi-paradox) estimating input parameters for Drake's equation, inspired by a [recent paper,](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf) on the Fermi paradox. The first question in the series, with more explanation, [is here](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1337) The model in question uses probability distributions over seven input parameters. In this case we will be addressing the sixth parameter in the Drake's Equation, . It is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space. Anything that would produce an unambiguous resolution that a planet bears intelligent life suffices. Radio signals are the technology that most suspect will bring about that resolution, but laser light, physical relics, and even gravitational waves can be considered. Given our definition of intelligences as having both tool use and language, it see...

https://elicit.org/binary?binaryQuestions.search=Robin%20Hanson's%20brain%20will%20be%20cryogenically%20frozen.&binaryQuestions.sortBy=popularity&limit=20&offset=0

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4043/when-will-openai-unveil-their-secret-ai-project/

Last year, OpenAI announced their big project for that year: [GPT-2](https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/), a transformer based language model representing a significant advance in language modeling capabilities. On February 17th an [article](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openai-moonshot-elon-musk-sam-altman-greg-brockman-messy-secretive-reality/) from the MIT Technology Review reported, One of the biggest secrets is the project OpenAI is working on next. Sources described it to me as the culmination of its previous four years of research: an AI system trained on images, text, and other data using massive computational resources. A small team has been assigned to the initial effort, with an expectation that other teams, along with their work, will eventually fold in. On the day it was announced at an all-company meeting, interns weren’t allowed to attend. People familiar with the plan offer an explanation: the leadership thinks this is the most promis...

Will humanity maintain a continuous off-Earth presence until 2050?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3385/will-humanity-maintain-a-continuous-off-earth-presence-until-2050/

Since October 31 2000, the date [Soyuz TM-31](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TM-31) lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying the members of [Expedition 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_1), the first long-duration ISS crew, humanity has maintained a permanent off-Earth presence for more than 19 years. This question asks: Will humanity maintain an off-Earth presence continuously until 1 January 2050? For a positive resolution, at least one living and conscious biological human must be physically located at some point beyond 100km altitude above Earth's mean sea level at all times continuously until 1 January 2050. This could include persons aboard spacecraft and space stations, as well as persons on any astronomical object other than Earth (e.g. Moon or Mars explorers / settlers). If the number of living and conscious biological humans off-Earth drops to zero at any time before 1 January 2050, this question resolves negatively. [EM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Will Alcor offer the use of a fixative during cryopreservation procedures before 2030?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4051/will-alcor-offer-the-use-of-a-fixative-during-cryopreservation-procedures-before-2030/

Aldehyde-Stabilized Cryopreservation (ASC) [is](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001122401500245X) a brain-banking technique for preserving detailed brain ultrastructure over long time scales. It was the technique that [won](https://www.brainpreservation.org/large-mammal-announcement/) the Large Mammal BPF Prize in 2018. ASC works by fixing biological tissue using glutaraldehyde, protecting the tissue from decay due to autolysis or putrefaction. However, glutaraldehyde is not the only [fixative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixation_(histology)) available. At the moment, ASC is merely the only technique that I'm currently aware of that uses a fixative to protect tissue prior to cryopreservation. Alcor does not currently offer ASC for its members, writing [a mixed review about it as a research direction](https://www.alcor.org/blog/http-www-alcor-org-blog-alcor-position-statement-on-large-brain-preservation-foundation-prize//) in 2018, and without releasing any plans...