Seth Baum Appointed to Advisory Board of AI & Society

GCRI’s Seth Baum has been appointed to the Advisory Board of the journal AI & Society. AI & Society is an interdisciplinary journal focused on societal issues related to artificial intelligence including the design, use, management, and policy of information, communications and new media technologies, with a particular emphasis on cultural, social, cognitive, economic, ethical, and philosophical implications.

Read More »

Volunteer/Intern Position: Media Engagement on Global Catastrophic Risk

The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (GCRI) seeks a volunteer/intern to contribute on the topic of media engagement on global catastrophic risk, which is the risk of events that could harm or destroy global human civilization. The work would include two parts: (1) analysis of existing media coverage of global catastrophic risk and (2) formulation of strategy for media engagement by GCRI and our colleagues. The intern may also have opportunities to get involved in other aspects of GCRI.

All aspects of global catastrophic risk would be …

Read More »

GCR News Summary June/July 2016

B-61 nuclear bomb, the same model as stored at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey; Image courtesy of Phil Schmitten / United States Department of Defense

by Matthijs Maas

A failed coup attempt against the Turkish government raised fears over the safety of the US nuclear stockpile stored at Incirlik Air Base after authorities temporarily locked down the base and arrested the base commander for supporting the mutineers’ air operations. Under NATO’s nuclear sharing agreement, Incirlik Air Base plays host to an estimated 50 US B61 hydrogen bombs–over a …

Read More »

August Newsletter: New Director of Communications

Dear friends,

It is my pleasure to announce that longtime GCRI Associate Robert de Neufville has been promoted to the position of Director of Communications. Robert will oversee GCRI’s website and newsletter, as well as lead a renewed media outreach program. He also joinsTony Barrett, Grant Wilson, and myself on GCRI’s leadership team. Robert’s work is funded through a donation GCRI recently secured from Pattern, an AI company that, like GCRI, has a “geographically decentralized” structure in which workers can live anywhere in the world. We …

Read More »

Working Paper: On the Promotion of Safe and Socially Beneficial Artificial Intelligence

GCRI is launching a working paper series with a new paper On the promotion of safe and socially beneficial artificial intelligence by Seth Baum.

Abstract
This paper discusses means for promoting artificial intelligence (AI) that is designed to be safe and beneficial for society (or simply “beneficial AI”). The promotion of beneficial AI is a social challenge because it seeks to motivate AI developers to choose beneficial AI designs. Currently, the AI field is focused mainly on building AIs that are more capable, with little regard to …

Read More »

The Ethics of Outer Space: A Consequentialist Perspective

View the paper “The Ethics of Outer Space: A Consequentialist Perspective”

Outer space is of major interest to consequentialist ethics for two basic reasons. First, the vast expanses of outer space offer opportunities for achieving vastly more good or bad consequences than can be achieved on Earth alone. If consequences are valued equally regardless of where they occur then achieving good consequences in space is of paramount importance. For human civilization, this can mean the building of space colonies or even the macroengineering of structures like Dyson …

Read More »

GCRI Experts Featured In Science Magazine

GCRI’s Seth Baum and Dave Denkenberger are featured in an article in Science Magazine titled “Here’s how the world could end—and what we can do about it”.

Read More »

Podcast: Earthquakes As Global Catastrophic Risk

GCRI’s Seth Baum participated in a podcast hosted by Ariel Conn of the Future of Life Institute (FLI) on the question of whether earthquakes could be a global catastrophic risk. You can listen to the podcast here.

Read More »

Alternative Foods as a Solution to Global Food Supply Catastrophes

View the paper “Alternative Foods as a Solution to Global Food Supply Catastrophes”

Analysis of future food security typically focuses on managing gradual trends such as population growth, natural resource depletion, and environmental degradation. However, several risks threaten to cause large and abrupt declines in food security. For example, nuclear war, volcanic eruptions, and asteroid impact events can block sunlight, causing abrupt global cooling. In extreme but entirely possible cases, these events could make agriculture infeasible worldwide for several years, creating a food supply catastrophe of …

Read More »

GCR News Summary May 2016

President Obama and Prime Minister Abe at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial image courtesy of Pete Souza/The White House

President Obama became the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, just a little more than one month after Secretary of State John Kerry became the highest ranking US official to visit the city where the US detonated a nuclear weapon at the end of World War II. Obama laid a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, but did not apologize for the use of nuclear weapons against Japan. …

Read More »