Anastasia Gamick on Why Most Scientists Aren’t Solving the World’s Biggest Problems, and What They Should Do Instead

Most scientists do “safe” research to secure their next grant. But what if more of them worked on the most important problems instead?

In this episode, we talk with Anastasia Gamick, co-founder of Convergent Research, about how to raise our level of ambition for what science can actually achieve.

Convergence Research incubates what they call “focused research organizations”: small, startup-style teams that build critical “public good” tech, which both academia and for-profits ignore. We discuss:

• What makes a research project truly high-impact in view of an AI world
• Concrete examples of these projects: maps of brain synapses, software that’s provably safe, drug screening, good data for AI-powered scientific research, and more
• How to prioritize defensive technology, such as biosafety tools, instead of just pushing every frontier as fast as possible
• How young scientists can find the work that matters most for the future