Some of the main reasons fungi aren't as central on our radar as bacteria and viruses is that at the human species level, they don't make that many of us sick - our warm bodies aren't optimal homes, our immune system can detect them and kick into gear faster than they reproduce at scale, they're not super efficient spreading between healthy humans. 

Compared to an engineered virus, fungal threat isn't keeping me up at night. BUT...if I take a 'systems thinking' go at these protective factors, I notice potential for convergence that actually does make me quite nervous:

(a) situations that previously just lead to death such as many cancers, organ failures, or HIV/AIDs, are now survivable through chemo, invasive surgeries, immuno-suppressant drugs -- this success also means a rapidly growing number of us globally are immunocompromised therefore more susceptible to fungal infection

(b) climate change is affecting fungal adaptation to warmer environments which extends their viable enviro range into places they haven't traditionally been present (> animal/human encounters). It could potentially inch them closer to mammalian body temps, but that's still speculative.

(c) this is me wandering a bit but seems worth mentioning -- manipulating infectious fungi already happens in secure lab conditions, but new methods to speed up and scale fungi in areas like alt protein & fermentation food science are more open...this is potentially dual purpose in lowering the barriers to manipulating fungi.

So more and more people are vulnerable to fungal infection as it is, more fungi may evolve to a point they can infect mammals incl. humans, and fungal reproduction acceleration techniques are already in use. 

Then we consider our abilities to detect, diagnose, and treat fungal pathogens...surveillance and therapeutics are decades behind where we are for viruses and bacteria. Resistance is already a problem. 

Business as usual means we'll see this problem steadily growing. But should a sufficiently evolved or engineered fungus emerge on the scene, the existing state of neglect could stand as a major vulnerability to our ability to prevent or contain spread before significant harm & suffering is caused.

I'm interested to know how things are coming along with your lab? 

I came to this same conclusion recently re: fungal threat as a seriously neglected risk in biosecurity -- fungal pathogens are hugely neglected in general and this is just magnified in biosec. I started writing a piece on it then paused, searched the forum for fungi, and your piece is sitting right there!

It would be interesting initiative to first (a) get "think fungal" onto the biosec mindset about pathogen types, to then (b) link biosec with global health efforts with respect to fungi given we're in the dark ages with our fungi detection/dx/rx capabilities (and even without AI, as you described One Health shows fungal risk is going to hugely increase) so advancing current priorities would in effect also help with preparedness & response capacities in a biosec context.

Did you/Manifund publish anything on this yet?

Thank you for this! I think the literacy angle is really powerful as it taps into knowledge-is-power through informing action without reducing its value to whether we can directly affect global power development.

I also realize my comment may be too tangential to your original post to really belong here --I've started a new post on the topic: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oELJZFY9LBAkpCccw/is-safe-ai-development-intractable-for-middle-powers-the

Thanks for surfacing this -- in the AI safety courses & organization researching I've been exploring, the ominous absence in agenda-setting of the vast majority of the world both by geographic and population scale is really frightening. So this is me giving an ineffectual +1, I have no solutions.

There's a somewhat along-side this question I've been hovering around. I'm in Canada, and from my perspective while the frontier development US-China poles make the current intent focus on the US make sense, at the same time I'm increasingly confused why the potential for middle power impact seems limited to our failed leverage to shape (ie stop) the frantic American development speed. Surely in concert we can do more than helplessly hang on and hope to benefit more than we're screwed?

I finally found a perspective on this worded way better than I could hope to put it, here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-185388441 (How AI Safety Is Getting Middle Powers Wrong - The case for pivoting from global governance to national interests, Anton Leicht).

Interesting to me is the case for these countries to actually act explicitly in national self-interest with AI safety integrated as national security to better gain salience and strategic action. I could see this picking up traction in even non-democratic contexts. 

I'm curious about your thoughts on how this might resonate in Nigeria, SA, etc?

Just adding a me-as-well, Ana! To all of this. 

(I even asked at a program info presentation about how adults with care-giving responsibilities could be included in the described activities where one seemingly had no other needs to take care of during the day but my question went unacknowledged lol!)

 Mental health IS health. Period.

Integrating mental health with physical health understanding & treatment would really transform outcomes. I started my career in mental health intervention research and it's hard to see so many years later the same efforts having to be made. The org I first worked with has a campaign on now Mental health is health, making the case it's debilitating nonsense that some illnesses are treated like illnesses while others are treated with judgement, neglect, silence.

I appreciate stand-alone, MH illness specific action as it's so neglected and also wonder if whole-health integration as a goal for effective interventions would raise all boats, so to speak?

The simple answer to your question about the noteworthy salaries at core EA orgs: Symbolic Capitalism.

A truly EA approach to EA work would be everything is carried out with very reasonable wages in the lowest cost labour markets in the world, across every level of an organization, because even paying outright for staff members to undertake whatever specific niche skill training might be needed for a role would still never add up to even close to the entry level salaries at some of these US- and UK-based places. 

Nice opportunity to share, thanks for posting. 

I was just sifting through NATO-DIANA Challenge/Accelerator topics to i.d. shared opportunities with different names. I think space, defense, remote communities, extreme enviros, etc. could bring much more synergy (and funding) than GCR folks recognize. I might map some of this out in the coming weeks if only to expand the field of funding opps people are thinking about.

Really great read on what sounds like a bumpy year. Thank you for posting!