October 2013 Newsletter

Post Date October 11, 2013
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Dear friends,

The saying “anything is possible” isn’t quite true, but much more is possible than we sometimes might think. For example, it is now clear that United States Treasury bonds are not the risk-free investments they were long assumed to be. The risk-free assumption was rooted in a failure of imagination, a failure to recognize the possibilities of divided government. So too for many global catastrophic risks. Recent research on the economics of climate change has emphasized the importance of catastrophic outcomes outside the range …

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September 2013 Newsletter

Post Date September 05, 2013
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Dear friends,

Seth Baum is out of the office now, so I am sending the newsletter in his absence. This month, I would like to talk a bit about geoengineering. Geoengineering is the large-scale manipulation of the climate, particularly to alleviate the effects of climate change (also called “climate engineering”). Geoengineering epitomizes how many distinct global catastrophic risks have a dynamic relationship. For example, in one possible scenario, society decides to lower the planet’s temperature by engaging in stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI)—a technology that essentially blankets …

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August 2013 Newsletter

Post Date August 07, 2013
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Dear friends,

We have some exciting and important news this month. As of 29 July, GCRI is now part of the fiscal sponsorship organization Social & Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE). SEE is an established fiscal sponsor organization based in Los Angeles. They sponsor about 100 projects from around the country across a wide range of issues. Joining SEE gives GCRI access to some great resources and also gives us 501c3 status for our fundraising. The switch also means we’re no longer part of Blue Marble Space (BMS). While the …

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Miles Brundage Gives Online Lecture on Artificial General Intelligence

Post Date July 30, 2013
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Category emerging technologies, online lectures

On Thursday 25 July, GCRI hosted an online lecture by Miles Brundage entitled ‘A Social Science Perspective on Global Catastrophic Risk Debates: The Case of Artificial General Intelligence’. (See the pre-lecture announcement.) Brundage is a PhD student at Arizona State University’s Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, where he is affiliated with the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO). He also spent two years at the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, which funds promising early stage energy technologies.

Brundage’s lecture described how …

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Conferences Directory Updates

Post Date July 24, 2013
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GCRI has updated our conferences directory in several ways.  First, for past conferences, we added links to conference papers, output documents, conference videos, and so forth, as available. The idea is to make the conferences directory not only a resource for finding future events, but also a library of information from GCR conferences from around the world. Conferences provide some of the most recent and relevant GCR information from expert sources, so making their contents easily available is important. Second, we updated past conferences to …

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July 2013 Newsletter

Post Date July 03, 2013
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Dear friends,

Happy Independence Day to all the Americans on the list. (And happy Canada Day/Fête du Canada, and everyone else now celebrating a National Day). It is an interesting and important moment for American democracy. Last month’s leak of information about the US National Security Agency’s large-scale surveillance program (here’s a good overview) provides a stark reminder of how communication and information technologies can be used to support those in power. But it is also a reminder that power exists in many forms, and that …

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GCR News Summary June 2013

Post Date July 01, 2013
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U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius speaking to the World Health Assembly image courtesy of US Mission Geneva/Eric Bridiers.

“Every pandemic emergence seems to be a law unto itself.” David Morens, Jeffrey Taubenberger, and Anthony Fauci wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine that there’s no evidence viruses that develop one mutation that could lead them to becoming pandemic will necessarily develop any others. In fact, an important open question is whether any bird flu virus that infects humans could viably develop the …

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Eric Talbot Jensen Gives Online Lecture on Future Weapons and the Law of Armed Conflict

Post Date June 25, 2013
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On Wednesday 19 June, GCRI hosted an online lecture by Eric Talbot Jensen entitled ‘The Future of the Law of Armed Conflict: Ostriches, Butterflies, and Nanobots’. Jensen is an Associate Professor at the Brigham Young University School of Law and formerly spent two decades in the US Army as a Cavalry Officer and a Judge Advocate, including a position as Chief of the Army’s International Law Branch. His lecture is based on a forthcoming paper he wrote of the same name [1].

The law of armed …

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Catherine Rhodes Gives Online Lecture on Pathogenic Genetic Resources and Sovereign Rights

Post Date June 18, 2013
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Category infectious disease, law & policy, online lectures

On Tuesday 12 June, GCRI hosted an online lecture by Catherine Rhodes entitled ‘Sovereign Wrongs: Ethics in the Governance of Pathogenic Genetic Resources’. Rhodes is a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester’s Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation, where she researches how science can address humanity’s major challenges, with a focus on the interplay between science and international processes. Her lecture is based on a paper she published of the same name [1].

Rhodes’s lecture raised the question of who owns ‘pathogenic genetic resources’, meaning …

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June 2013 Newsletter

Post Date June 05, 2013
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Dear friends,

We took the opportunity over the past month to jumpstart our online lectures, which previously hadn’t gotten the attention they deserve. We’re now announcing six new lectures over the next three months, with more in the works. It’s a wonderful mix of topics, ranging from chemical pollution to pandemics to artificial intelligence, and including original natural and social science, legal and policy analysis, and more. This breadth is what makes global catastrophic risk so challenging and exciting. We hope you’ll join us for some of …

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