Website concept for visualizing existential risk - looking for feedback/funding

By Ville Seppälä @ 2025-07-05T11:41 (+3)

Hi EA community! New poster here, also quite novice on the topic. 

TL;DR

I’m interested in creating a website for visualizing existential risk and its consequences. So far, I have created an outline/wireframe of the page, subject to major changes: 

The site allows the users to input yearly values for existential risk (or survival) probability for various time periods, and then calculates the expected longevity of humankind (measured in expected years the humankind has left or expected human lives that will be lived) over the chosen time scale. The graphs show the results in both the condensed and linear time scales. 

Site would be produced in R with its “shiny” and “ggplot2” libraries. 

Powerpoint presentation of the concept

This presentation gives a more detailed overview of the site and its functionality, with the above sketch of the site layout as its focal point:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MYwDxNplckHsZZDX9KoPoIQtO3CPq4YPcuMRX1p3bhM/edit?usp=sharing

I advise you to check the presentation before participating in the conversation.

What the site aims to do: 

The site has two target audiences/aims: 

• General audience. Aim is to increase awareness on the topic and to make people understand cumulative harmful/beneficial effects of existential risks over long time scales through mathematic/visual representation.
• People involved in x-risk themes. Aim here is to provide a platform especially for collecting community’s estimates on existential risk (especially over longer time scales, which has not been paid too much attention in previous studies) and to provide tools for communicating their views on them (result graphs/data are downloadable). 

Looking for feedback/funding

Currently I’m looking for: 

• Funding
• Feedback
• Possibly collaborators

From this thread, I mostly aim to get feedback, both to make the site as good as possible and to help tp get funding. The kind of feedback I’m looking for: 

• General feedback on both the concept and the site layout. What is good and what is bad? Is this a good idea?
• What major changes should I make to the overall concept/focus or what should be emphasized? I haven’t done any coding for the site yet (planning to start in 2026), so major revisions/re-evaluations are possible.
• Should I focus more on individual risk factors? How? What do you think of my current approach on them:
  • The usual approach seems to be evaluating the probability at which a specific risk causes extinction. I think it is more correct to think about how much removing a particular risk factor would reduce the overall existential risk (drawing also from Toby Ord’s Precipice, page 175 onward). For example, it is unlikely that climate change in itself physically causes human extinction, but it increases the likelihood of conflicts, which might increase the probability of extinction through other means. Thus stopping climate change would reduce the overall existential risk. With this approach, I must emphasize that risk factors are not independent.
• Is the approach to time scales (tenfold increases) reasonable? I’m trying to strike a balance between detail/customizability and simplicity/usability.
• If I continue with the chosen periodic approach, what kind of default values should I use in the site? I might use the results of this study as some kind of guide: https://forecastingresearch.org/xpt However, given the recent AI progress, the threat from AI could be evaluated as higher than in the time of study? Especially the short term threat (page 329). In general, are there any studies that have also focused on longer timer estimates on total x-risk? XPT also had a question on expected year of extinction, and its answers  (see page 338) can be used in estimating the yearly rates over longer time horizons. In time, default values could be set from the answers that users provide to the server.
• I am quite new to the topic and would appreciate links to relevant studies/writing in general.
• Some details are not described thoroughly in the slides yet but will be added to the site. E.g. definition of extinction. Many of these details I do have in mind already but feel free to ask about them in case I’m missing something obvious mentally. 
• Do you find the powerpoint presentation understandable? Do you think a person who is not involved in the topic of existential risks would find it understandable (for example someone reviewing for a generalist fund deciding on funding)?
• To what aspects of the site should I focus on my written applications (presentation will be linked in them) to sell the idea, and is it dependent on the targeted fund? I’m looking to apply for funding at least from the Long-Term Future Fund as well as some general organizations that provide funding for science/art/etc in Finland. Any other suggestions of funding organizations to apply from? I am also looking for references.
• I am not sure if I need collaborators, or what kind. If you recognize that you would have a lot to give to the project, send me a message.