GCR News Summary April 2016

Alpha Centauri and Southern Cross image courtesy of Claus Madsen/ESO, CC BY 4.0

John Kerry became the first US Secretary of State to visit the site of the US nuclear attack on Hiroshima. Kerry wrote in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial guest book that the site was “a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself.” William J. Broad and David E. Sanger wrote in The New York Times …

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A Model of Pathways to Artificial Superintelligence Catastrophe for Risk and Decision Analysis

View the paper “A Model of Pathways to Artificial Superintelligence Catastrophe for Risk and Decision Analysis”

This paper analyzes the risk of a catastrophe scenario involving self-improving artificial intelligence. An self-improving AI is one that makes itself smarter and more capable. In this scenario, the self-improvement is recursive, meaning that the improved AI makes an even more improved AI, and so on. This causes a takeoff of successively more intelligent AIs. The result is an artificial superintelligence (ASI), which is an AI that is significantly more …

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GCR News Summary March 2016

Go game image courtesy of Jaro Larnnos under a Creative Commons license

Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo computer program beat 9-dan professional go player Lee Se-dol 4-1 in a five-game match. Lee has won 18 international titles and is widely regarded as one of the best Go players in the world. AlphaGo made a number of decisive moves that the human players found completely surprising and “beautiful”. The South Korean Go Association granted AlphaGo an honorary 9-dan ranking for its “sincere efforts” to master the game at a level approaching …

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GCR News Summary February 2016

Stop Trident demonstration in London image courtesy of David Holt under a Creative Commons license

Tens of thousands of people gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to protest the renewal of Britain’s Trident nuclear submarine program. It was the largest anti-nuclear demonstration in England since 1983, when several hundred thousand people demonstrated against the deployment of cruise missiles at Greenham Common. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the protesters they should not forget that a nuclear war would mean “absolute destruction on both sides” and said that he …

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February Newsletter: The Year Ahead

Dear friends,

One year ago, GCRI announced a new direction focused on research to develop the best ways to confront humanity’s gravest threats. Over the past year, we’ve delivered:

* An edited collection, Confronting Future Catastrophic Threats to Humanity, containing ten original research papers including five by GCRI affiliates
* Six additional research papers, making for a total of nine peer-reviewed journal articles and two book chapters
* 19 popular articles in publications such as the Guardian and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
* Two symposia at the Society …

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GCR News Summary January 2016

Aedes aegypti mosquito image courtesy of James Gathany/US Centers for Disease Control

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spread of the Zika virus in Latin America and the Caribbean a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Zika is a virus primarily transmitted by mosquitos that was first identified in rhesus monkeys in Uganda in 1947. The most common symptoms of Zika virus disease are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis, although in rare cases it may cause Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can leave patients completely paralyzed. …

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GCR News Summary December 2015

March on the Paris climate talks image courtesy of John Englart under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license (the image has been cropped)

Nearly 200 countries agreed in Paris to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to keep the average global temperature “well below” 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels. The Paris Agreement was intended to reduce human carbon emissions below the amount that can be absorbed by natural carbon sinks by the second half of the century. National targets under the agreement are not enough to keep the temperature increase below 2°C, …

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False Alarms, True Dangers? Current and Future Risks of Inadvertent U.S.-Russian Nuclear War

View the paper “False Alarms, True Dangers? Current and Future Risks of Inadvertent U.S.-Russian Nuclear War”

In the post–Cold War era, it is tempting to see the threat of nuclear war between the United States and Russia as remote: Both nations’ nuclear arsenals have shrunk since their Cold War peaks, and neither nation is actively threatening the other with war. A number of analysts, however, warn of the risk of an inadvertent nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia — that is, a conflict that …

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December Newsletter: A Focus On Solutions

Dear friends,

This holiday season, please consider supporting the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. You can donate online or contact me for further information. At this time, GCRI’s success is limited mainly by its available funding. And nothing beats giving the gift of protection from global catastrophe.

In my view, what’s ultimately important is not the risks themselves but the actions we can take to reduce them. A risk could be very large, but if we can’t do anything about it, then we should focus on something else. …

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GCR News Summary November 2015

Chinese power plant image courtesy of Tobias Brox under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (the image has been cropped)

Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian Su-24 fighter-bomber near the border between Turkey and Syria. Some reports indicate that the Russian plane’s pilots were shot and possibly killed as they parachuted from their damaged plane. It was the first time a NATO member shot down a Russian military plane since the end of the Cold War. Turkey claimed the Russian plane violated its airspace for five minutes and …

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