Violent Conflict Risk in Planetary Defense Decisions

Post Date May 14, 2019
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GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum gave a talk titled “Accounting For Violent Conflict Risk In Planetary Defense Decisions” at the 2019 International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Planetary Defense Conference in Washington, D.C. Baum’s talk looked at the relationship between efforts to protect the Earth from the impact of near-Earth objects (NEOs) and the risk of violent conflict. Richard A. Lovett wrote about Baum’s talk and about the discussion of planetary defense decisions at the conference in Cosmos.

GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum gave a talk titled …

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Why Catastrophes Can Change the Course of Humanity

Post Date April 18, 2019
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BBC Future just published an essay by GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum titled “Why Catastrophes Can Change the Course of Humanity” on global catastrophes and the long-term fate of human civilization. The essay argues that we need to consider the impact of potential catastrophes not just on people alive today but also on the long-term future of humanity.

The essay draws on a paper Dr. Baum wrote with a group of scholars including Olle Häggström, Robin Hanson, Karin Kuhlemann, Anders Sandberg, and Roman …

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Evaluating Future Nanotechnology: The Net Societal Impacts of Atomically Precise Manufacturing

Post Date April 02, 2019
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View the paper “Evaluating Future Nanotechnology: The Net Societal Impacts of Atomically Precise Manufacturing”

Atomically precise manufacturing (APM) is the assembly of materials with atomic precision. APM does not currently exist, and may not be feasible, but if it is feasible, then the societal impacts could be dramatic. This paper assesses the net societal impacts of APM across the full range of important APM sectors: general material wealth, environmental issues, military affairs, surveillance, artificial intelligence, and space travel. Positive effects were found for material wealth, the …

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March Newsletter: Policy Outreach

Post Date March 28, 2019
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Category newsletter, outreach

Dear friends,

This month, GCRI welcomes our newest team member, Jared Brown, who will serve as GCRI’s Special Advisor for Government Affairs. Until recently, he worked at the US Congressional Research Service, building practical knowledge of the workings of the US government, especially with respect to emergency management and homeland security. Now, he is applying this knowledge to global catastrophic risk. His work supports the broader global catastrophic risk community’s policy outreach efforts, especially with the US government. We at GCRI are grateful for Mr. Brown’s …

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GCRI Welcomes Special Advisor Jared Brown

Post Date March 27, 2019
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I am delighted to announce GCRI’s newest team member, Jared Brown, who will serve as GCRI’s Special Advisor for Government Affairs. Mr. Brown will assist GCRI in particular with our policy outreach, mainly with the United States government. Outreach is a growing focus for GCRI, and Mr. Brown’s assistance will be of tremendous value for this. (For further detail on our outreach, please see Summary of GCRI’s 2018-2019 Accomplishments, Plans, and Fundraising.)

Until recently, Mr. Brown worked at the US Congressional Research Service, developing a very …

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February Newsletter: Nuclear War Risk Analysis

Post Date February 28, 2019
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Dear friends, In order to most effectively reduce the risk of global catastrophe, it is often essential to have a quantitative understanding of the risk. It is particularly essential when we are faced with decisions that involve tradeoffs between different risks and decisions that require prioritizing among multiple risks. For this reason, GCRI has long been at the forefront of the risk and decision analysis of global catastrophic risk. This month, we announce a new paper, “Reflections on the Risk Analysis of Nuclear War”. This paper summarizes the …

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Reflections on the Risk Analysis of Nuclear War

Post Date February 15, 2019
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Category articles, nuclear war, risk analysis

View the paper “Reflections on the Risk Analysis of Nuclear War”

Would the world be safer with or without nuclear weapons? On one hand, nuclear weapons may increase the severity of war due to their extreme explosive power. On the other hand, they may decrease the frequency of major wars by strengthening deterrence. Is the decrease in frequency enough to offset the increase in severity? (This tradeoff is illustrated in the graphic above.) This is a vital policy question for which risk analysis has …

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BBC On Short-Termism And Long-Term Trajectories

Post Date January 31, 2019
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Category aftermath, ethics, media coverage, post-catastrophe

Richard Fisher of the BBC has published a detailed and thoughtful article The perils of short-termism: Civilisation’s greatest threat. The article covers the widespread tendency across contemporary society to focus on very short-term issues and several efforts to promote more long-term thinking and action. The article includes a detailed discussion of the research paper Long-term trajectories of human civilization, which I am lead author of. The BBC article includes each of the four types of trajectories covered in the Long-term trajectories paper (and illustrated in …

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GCRI Receives $250,000 Donation For AI Research And Outreach

Post Date December 15, 2018
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I am delighted to announce that GCRI has received a $250,000 donation from Gordon Irlam, to be used for GCRI’s research and outreach on artificial intelligence. The donation will be used mainly to fund Robert de Neufville and myself during 2019.

The donation is a major first step toward GCRI’s goal of raising $1.5 million to enable the organization to start scaling up. Our next fundraising priority is to bring GCRI Director of Research Tony Barrett on full-time, and possibly also one other senior hire whom …

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December Newsletter: A Turning Point For GCRI

Post Date December 13, 2018
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Dear friends,

We believe that GCRI may now be at a turning point. Having established ourselves as leaders in the field of global catastrophic risk, we now seek to scale up the organization so that we can do correspondingly more to address global catastrophic risk. To that end, we have published detailed records of our accomplishments, plans for future work, and financial needs. An overview of this information is contained in our new blog post, Summary of GCRI’s 2018-2019 Accomplishments, Plans, and Fundraising.

To begin scaling up, we …

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