January-February 2014 Newsletter

Post Date February 28, 2014
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Dear friends,

2014 is shaping up to be a busy year for the GCR community. It is encouraging that GCR is getting increasing attention, and that leaders of the GCR community are getting increasing recognition for our work. I personally have been honored by several prestigious speaking opportunities and a full profile in a new Scientific American Blogs article Evaluating the Risk of Events That Could End Civilization. The speaking opportunities will send me flying around the world in March, for events in Stockholm and Tokyo. …

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Deepwater Horizon and the Law of the Sea: Was the Cure Worse than the Disease?

Post Date January 31, 2014
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Category publications

View the paper “Deepwater Horizon and the Law of the Sea: Was the Cure Worse than the Disease?”

The number 4.9 million is commonly known as the number of barrels of crude oil that entered the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Less known, but perhaps equally disconcerting, is the number 1.7 million—the number of gallons of Corexit, a toxic dispersant used to mitigate oil spills, that was also released into the Gulf of Mexico. Some observers claim that Corexit spared …

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DHS Emerging Technologies Project

Post Date January 29, 2014
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Category emerging technologies, law & policy

I am writing to announce a new GCRI project on risks from emerging technologies. The project is sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security under its Science & Technology Directorate Centers of Excellence, through the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE), which is based at the University of Southern California.

The project’s Principal Investigator is GCRI Director of Research Tony Barrett. Contributions are also coming from our colleague Jun Zhuang, Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at SUNY-Buffalo, and …

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KVA Emerging Technologies Event

Post Date January 21, 2014
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Category emerging technologies, events

On 17 March 2014, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien (KVA, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) is hosting an event Emerging technologies and the future of humanity. I will give a talk “The great downside dilemma for risky emerging technologies”, loosely based on themes from my recent paper Double catastrophe: Intermittent stratospheric geoengineering induced by societal collapse. Usually I try to avoid travel like this, but this is a good event and they wouldn’t let me present remotely. Here’s my abstract:

The great downside dilemma for risky emerging technologies
Many …

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The Ethics of Global Catastrophic Risk from Dual-Use Bioengineering

Post Date January 04, 2014
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Category ethics, publications

View the paper “The Ethics of Global Catastrophic Risk from Dual-Use Bioengineering”

Dual-use technologies are technologies that can be used in both beneficial and harmful ways. Some technologies produced through biological engineering (bioengineering) are dual-use. Of all the possible harms from dual-use technologies, global catastrophic risk is a significant concern. Global catastrophic risks (GCRs) are risks of events that could significantly harm or even destroy civilization at the global scale. This paper discusses ethical issues raised by those bioengineered technologies that pose a GCR. The paper …

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November-December 2013 Newsletter

Post Date December 04, 2013
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Category events, integrated assessment, interaction effects, newsletter, research priorities, response options

Dear friends,

GCRI is actively shifting its focus towards activities related to our four GCR synthesis research topics: integrated assessment, interaction effects, research priorities, and response options. Some other activities, including online lectures, will pause as the shift proceeds. We expect that increased attention to the synthesis topics will help us prioritize further work on the most important GCR issues. I look forward to sharing more details when they are ready for public distribution. Please contact me if you would like to discuss privately.

Meanwhile, Robert de …

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New Review Of AI Risk Book Our Final Invention

Post Date October 14, 2013
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Category emerging technologies, publications

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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Online Lecture Reflections And Plans

Post Date October 09, 2013
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Category online lectures, planning

This past May, we kicked off a series of online lectures with Aladdin Diakun’s Towards the Effective Governance of Geoengineering: What Role for Intellectual Property?. Since then, we have held 11 different lectures, including a reprise lecture, on diverse topics including chemical pollution, artificial intelligence, ethics, and international law. The lecture series has been very successful by many counts. Now, for the first time since May, there are no new lectures scheduled, though next month we will host practice lectures for the SRA 2013 GCR …

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Tony Milligan Gives Lecture on Virtue Ethics

Post Date October 08, 2013
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Category astrobiology, ethics, online lectures

On Wednesday 25 September, GCRI hosted an online lecture by Tony Milligan entitled ‘Virtue, Risk and Space Colonization’. Milligan is a Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the University of Hertfordshire.

Discussions of the ethics of risk and space colonization are often dominated by consequentialist ethics. This includes GCRI’s recent ethics lecture by Nick Beckstead as well as my own writings on the topic (e.g. [1-2]). Milligan’s lecture covers the same risk and space topics but in terms of virtue ethics. Regardless of one’s views (and …

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Beckstead Reprise Lecture Audio Online

Post Date October 04, 2013
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Category ethics, online lectures

The mp3 audio file for Nick Beckstead’s reprise lecture is now online here. The reprise lecture was held 28 Aug 2013, titled On The Overwhelming Importance Of Shaping The Far Future. An online summary for the original lecture is already online here.

The audio file has been edited to remove sections in which the call was temporarily disconnected and other audio issues. However, we left in several stretches in which the audio is inaudible or marginally audible. We want it to be known that while the …

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