Space Expansion Must Support Sustainability – On Earth and in Space

View the article “Space Expansion Must Support Sustainability – On Earth and in Space”.

This article, published with the Royal United Services
Institute, discusses the role of sustainability when expanding human activities
into outer space. The article illustrates how a framework for space expansion
is being set right now, but that this framework risks expanding unsustainable practices
and paradigms into space. Consequently, global civilization risks wasting
immense amounts of resources and even failing to sustain humanity at worst. In response,
the article suggests five points of emphasis for a robust sustainability …

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From AI for People to AI for the World and the Universe

View the paper “From AI for People to AI for the World and the Universe”

Work on the ethics of artificial intelligence often focuses on the value of AI to human populations. This is seen, for example, in initiatives on AI for People. These initiatives do well to identify some important AI ethics issues, but they fall short by neglecting the ethical importance of nonhumans. This short paper calls for AI ethics to better account for nonhumans, such as by giving initiatives names like “AI for …

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GCR News Summary September 2015

Svalbard seed vault image courtesy of Erlend Bjørtvedt under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (image has been cropped)

In a joint statement ahead of the December Paris Climate Conference, US president Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping said they would “move ahead decisively to implement domestic climate policies, to strengthen bilateral coordination and cooperation, and to promote sustainable development and the transition to green, low-carbon, and climate-resilient economies”. China announced that in 2017 it would establish a national carbon market covering the iron and steel, nonferrous metals, power …

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Tim Maher Gives Lecture on Ambient Intelligence

On Thursday 1 August, GCRI hosted an online lecture by Tim Maher entitled ‘Ambient Intelligence: Implications for Global Environmental Change and Totalitarianism Risk’ (see the pre-lecture announcement). Maher is a recent graduate of Bard College’s M.S. program in Climate Science and Policy and a GCRI Research Assistant. The lecture is based on Maher’s M.S. thesis ‘Ambient Intelligence and Ambient Persuasive Technology: Sustainability and Threats to Autonomy’ [1]. The lecture included discussants Maurits Kaptein, Assistant Professor of Statistics and Research Methods at the University of Tilburg …

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New Publication: Teaching Astrobiology In A Sustainability Course, By Seth Baum

GCRI now has its second academic publication: Teaching astrobiology in a sustainability course by Seth Baum (i.e. me, your humble GCRI blogger).

This paper is based on Geog 30, an introductory undergraduate sustainability course I taught at Penn State. The basic idea is that while sustainability education usually focuses on sustainability on Earth, much can be learned from considering life in the universe. (Astrobiology is the study of life in the universe.) This includes a direct connection to GCR: In order to sustain Earth-originating life beyond …

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