Blog | Global Catastrophic Risk Institute

Beckstead Reprise Lecture Scheduled For 28 August

Post Date August 21, 2013

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Author Seth Baum

Due to popular demand, we are hosting a reprise of Nick Beckstead’s online lecture ‘On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future’. This lecture will also be recorded and posted online. There currently is space available for this – please email me to RSVP (seth [at] gcrinstitute.org).

Here is the full talk info (title & abstract are same as before):

On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future

Wednesday 28 August, 15:00 GMT (8:00 Los Angeles, 11:00 New York, 16:00 London)
To be held online via Skype. …

August 2013 Newsletter

Post Date August 07, 2013

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Author Grant Wilson

Category newsletter

Dear friends,

We have some exciting and important news this month. As of 29 July, GCRI is now part of the fiscal sponsorship organization Social & Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE). SEE is an established fiscal sponsor organization based in Los Angeles. They sponsor about 100 projects from around the country across a wide range of issues. Joining SEE gives GCRI access to some great resources and also gives us 501c3 status for our fundraising. The switch also means we’re no longer part of Blue Marble Space (BMS). While the …

Tim Maher Gives Lecture on Ambient Intelligence

Post Date August 06, 2013

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Author Kaitlin Butler

Category emerging technologies, ethics, governance failure, law & policy, online lectures

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 …

GCRI Is Joining Social & Environmental Entrepreneurs

Post Date August 03, 2013

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Author Seth Baum

Category announcement

We are pleased to announce that GCRI is joining a new fiscal sponsor, Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE). We are enthusiastic about SEE and look forward to partnering with them in this new chapter of GCRI’s existence. This also means that we are legally separating from our previous fiscal sponsor, Blue Marble Space.

What is a fiscal sponsor?

A fiscal sponsor is an umbrella organization for US nonprofits. A nonprofit project may seek fiscal sponsorship when it is too small to justify becoming a stand-alone organization, and/or …

Nick Beckstead To Deliver Online Lecture On Ethics of Far Future 15 August

Post Date August 01, 2013

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Author Seth Baum

Category ethics, online lectures

This is the pre-event announcement for an online lecture by Nick Beckstead, a Research Fellow at the Oxford University Future of Humanity Institute.

Here is the full talk info:

On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future
Thursday 15 August, 16:00 GMT (9:00 Los Angeles, 12:00 New York, 17:00 London)
To be held online via Skype. RSVP required by email to Seth Baum (seth [at] gcrinstitute.org). Space is limited.

The lecture is based on Beckstead’s recent PhD dissertation of the same title.

Abstract:

In this talk I will argue for two …

Miles Brundage Gives Online Lecture on Artificial General Intelligence

Post Date July 30, 2013

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Author Grant Wilson

Category emerging technologies, online lectures

On Thursday 25 July, GCRI hosted an online lecture by Miles Brundage entitled ‘A Social Science Perspective on Global Catastrophic Risk Debates: The Case of Artificial General Intelligence’. (See the pre-lecture announcement.) Brundage is a PhD student at Arizona State University’s Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, where he is affiliated with the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO). He also spent two years at the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, which funds promising early stage energy technologies.

Brundage’s lecture described how …

GCR News Summary July 2013

Post Date July 28, 2013

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Author Robert de Neufville

Category news summary

Artificially-colored MERS virus image courtesy of CSIRO.

ConceptNet, an artificial intelligence program developed by a team led by Catherine Havasi at the MIT Media Lab, performed as well as an average four-year-old on the information, vocabulary, and word reasoning portions of standard intelligence test. The program uses a crowdsourced semantic network—a database of statements of basic facts—to answer questions. Miles Brundage explained in Slate that the program did well on “precisely the parts of the test that one would expect computers to excel …

Conferences Directory Updates

Post Date July 24, 2013

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Author Grant Wilson

Category Uncategorized

GCRI has updated our conferences directory in several ways. First, for past conferences, we added links to conference papers, output documents, conference videos, and so forth, as available. The idea is to make the conferences directory not only a resource for finding future events, but also a library of information from GCR conferences from around the world. Conferences provide some of the most recent and relevant GCR information from expert sources, so making their contents easily available is important. Second, we updated past conferences to …

Dave Denkenberger To Deliver Online Lecture On Post-Catastrophe Food Crisis 22 August

Post Date July 23, 2013

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Author Seth Baum

Category online lectures, post-catastrophe

This is the pre-event announcement for an online lecture by Dave Denkenberger, Ph.D., an engineer at Ecova.

Here is the full talk info:

Feeding Everyone: Solving the Food Crisis in Event of Global Catastrophes that Kill the Sun or Crops
Thursday 22 August, 16:00 GMT (10:00 Denver, 12:00 New York, 17:00 London)
To be held online via Skype. RSVP required by email to Seth Baum (seth [at] gcrinstitute.org). Space is limited.

Please note: There will be no online post-lecture summary for this.

It is widely assumed that if agricultural production is …

Interview At Arup Connect

Post Date July 19, 2013

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Author Seth Baum

Category media coverage

Quick FYI: I’m featured in a new interview at Arup Connect, which is the online magazine of Arup, a multinational engineering company working on the built environment. Basically, they help build stuff. The interview was conducted by Sarah Wesseler, who I met at a Science Writers in New York. Ah networking. Anyway the interview covers why we started GCRI, some of the challenges and opportunities, and more.

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