Dear friends,
Happy Independence Day to all the Americans on the list. (And happy Canada Day/Fête du Canada, and everyone else now celebrating a National Day). It is an interesting and important moment for American democracy. Last month’s leak of information about the US National Security Agency’s large-scale surveillance program (here’s a good overview) provides a stark reminder of how communication and information technologies can be used to support those in power. But it is also a reminder that power exists in many forms, and that all of us have some.
Surveillance does not equal oppression. The NSA surveillance may only be oriented towards preventing large-scale violence and other major crimes. But surveillance can facilitate oppression and even totalitarianism. As the technologies for surveillance proliferate, we must learn how to live with their powers. Oversight may be needed to keep good governments from turning bad. At the same time, we must also remember that the technologies for mass destruction are also proliferating. As smaller groups become more capable of harm, the need for surveillance increases. The classic tradeoff between privacy and security will loom ever larger.
GCRI promotes open discussion of these issues. Last month’s online lecture by Eric Talbot Jensen discussed the major challenge posed by nonstate actors who refuse to abide by the Law of Armed Conflict or related norms. These are exactly the sorts of people targeted by NSA surveillance. This month, Tim Maher will give an online lecture about ambient intelligence technology, which can be used for surveillance but also for increasing energy efficiency and other pro-environmental changes. As background, I recommend Bryan Caplan’s paper The Totalitarian Threat (.doc file), discussing totalitarianism as a global catastrophic risk.
These communication and information technologies are the same technologies that enable GCRI to accomplish so much as a geographically decentralized organization. Indeed, even this email newsletter poses privacy challenges. We use the MailChimp newsletter service. Through that, I am able to know who clicks on which links in the newsletter, and I am often able to know who opens the email. (If you don’t receive HTML emails, or if you don’t display email images, then I won’t know if you open the email – for details see MailChimp’s About open tracking page.) I am the only person with access to this. I have occasionally glanced at who does what, but usually I just have more important things to do with my time. I do look at the aggregate statistics to learn basic trends, for example that more people open the newsletter when it has a juicy headline like “Thinking About Totalitarianism”. That said, if you wish to subscribe to the newsletter privately, I recommend using an anonymous email account. Or, we always post the newsletter on our blog – you can read it there.
As always, thank you for your interest in our work, and we welcome any comments, questions, and criticisms you may have, including about how we handle privacy.
Sincerely,
Seth Baum, Executive Director
June GCR News Summary
Robert de Neufville and Grant Wilson co-wrote our fourth monthly news summary. This month covers the newly named Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), updates on H7N9, a synthetic biology Kickstarter project, President Obama’s speech on climate change, a new NASA project on asteroid risk, and reflections on President Kennedy’s call for “general and complete disarmament” made fifty years ago.
For the full summary, please see GCR News Summary June 2013.
As always, if you know of something that may be worth including in the next news summary, please post it in the comment thread of the current summary, or send it via email to Grant Wilson (grant@gcrinstitute.org).
New Paper On Ethics & Dual-Use Bioengineering
This paper discusses ethics and law issues raised by dual-use bioengineering. Dual-use technologies are technologies with both beneficial and harmful applications. Bioengineered technologies can be both very beneficial and very harmful, in some cases posing a risk of global catastrophe. The paper argues that reducing GCR should be a top priority for those involved in geoengineering. It also discusses some opportunities to reduce the risk via international regulation. See discussion on the GCRI blog.
Baum, Seth and Grant Wilson. The ethics of global catastrophic risk from dual-use bioengineering. Ethics in Biology, Engineering and Medicine, forthcoming, DOI: 10.1615/EthicsBiologyEngMed.2013007629.
New Magazine Article ‘Making The Universe A Better Place’
Seth Baum has a short magazine article titled ‘Making The Universe A Better Place’ in the new issue of Current Exchange/Technophilic Magazine, a magazine for science and engineering students. The article tells Baum’s story of how he transitioned from an engineering grad student to someone active on global catastrophic risk and relates it to ideas at the intersection of global catastrophic risk and astrobiology. The article can be read in the full issue available here.
Past Online Lectures
On 11 June, Catherine Rhodes of the University of Manchester Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation presented on international pandemics governance. The talk was titled ‘Sovereign Wrongs: Ethics in the Governance of Pathogenic Genetic Resources’. A full summary is available here.
On 19 June, Eric Talbot Jensen of the Brigham Young University Law School presented on law for emerging weapons technologies. The talk was titled ‘The Future Of The Law Of Armed Conflict: Ostriches, Butterflies, And Nanobots’. A full summary is available here.
On 25-26 June, Itsuki Handoh of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto presented a talk titled ‘Phosphorus and Chemical Pollution as Global Catastrophic Risks’. A full summary is available here.
Upcoming Online Lectures
To be held via Skype or equivalent. RSVP required via email to Seth Baum (seth@gcrinstitute.org). For assistance with time zones, please see GCRI’s time zones resource.
Thursday 11 July 2013 17:00 GMT (13:00 New York):
Topic: Governance, Psychology, & Emerging Technologies
Speaker: Tim Maher, GCRI Research Assistant
Title: Ambient Intelligence: Implications for Global Environmental Change and Totalitarianism Risk
Abstract: See the Pre-Lecture Announcement
Invited Discussants:
Peter Howe, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and Assistant Professor, Utah State University Department of Environment & Society
Maurits Kaptein, Assistant Professor of Statistics and Research Methods at the University of Tilburg and founder of PersuasionAPI
Arden Rowell, GCRI Research Associate and Assistant Professor, University of Illinois College of Law
Thursday 25 July 2013 17:00 GMT (13:00 New York):
Topic: Emerging Technologies Development
Speaker: Miles Brundage, PhD student, Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, Arizona State University
Title: A Social Science Perspective on Global Catastrophic Risk Debates: The Case of Artificial General Intelligence
Abstract: See the Pre-Lecture Announcement
August (exact date TBD):
Topic: Ethics
Speaker: Nick Beckstead, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University
Title (Tentative): On The Overwhelming Importance Of Shaping The Far Future
