June Newsletter: Call For Advisees And Collaborators

Dear friends,

GCRI has recently put out an open call for participants in our 2022 Advising and Collaboration Program. The Program helps people get more involved in work on global catastrophic risk and focus their activities in more successful directions. We welcome people at all career points, from all geographic locations, and with any interest across the many aspects of global catastrophic risk. No significant time commitment is required; participation can range from a one-time call to get advice on how to get more involved to extended …

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Book Review: The Precipice

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Book review of The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, by Toby Ord, Hachette Books, 2020.

The new book The Precipice by Toby Ord provides a wide-ranging survey of topics related to global catastrophic risk. Compared to other books on global catastrophic risk, The Precipice stands out for its depth of discussion, its quality of scholarship, and its readability. However, the book errs in its emphasis on only the most extreme global catastrophe scenarios, its strong belief in the resilience of civilization, and …

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Deep Learning and the Sociology of Human-Level Artificial Intelligence

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The study of artificial intelligence has a long history of contributions from critical outside perspectives, such as work by philosopher Hubert Dreyfus. Following in this tradition is a new book by sociologist Harry Collins, Artifictional Intelligence: Against Humanity’s Surrender to Computers. I was invited to review the book for the journal Metascience.

The main focus of the book is on nuances of human sociology,
especially language, and their implications for AI. This is a worthy
contribution, all …

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Book Review: The Age of Em

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Book Review of The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth, by Robin Hanson, Oxford University Press, 2016.

A new book by Robin Hanson, The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth, is reviewed. The Age of Emdescribes a future scenario in which human minds are uploaded into computers, becoming emulations or “ems”. In the scenario, ems take over the global economy by running on fast computers and copying themselves to multitask. …

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Book Review: Only One Chance

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Review of: Philippe Grandjean. Only One Chance: How Environmental Pollution Impairs Brain Development – and How to Protect the Brains of the Next Generation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Humans have lived with chemical pollution for thousands of years, but the recent proliferation of industrial chemicals poses novel threats. In the new book Only One Chance, distinguished environmental health researcher Philippe Grandjean argues for special attention to developmental neurotoxicology, i.e. to the effects of chemical pollution on the developing human brain …

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New Review Of AI Risk Book Our Final Invention

Quick fyi – I have a review of Our Final Invention by James Barrat. The review is titled Our Final Invention: Is AI the Defining Issue for Humanity? and has been published at Scientific American Blogs. There is also a reprint at Yahoo News. It’s a very readable book, a good introduction to AI risk for people new to the topic, but also something that experts will also learn something from.

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