From AI for People to AI for the World and the Universe

View the paper “From AI for People to AI for the World and the Universe”

Work on the ethics of artificial intelligence often focuses on the value of AI to human populations. This is seen, for example, in initiatives on AI for People. These initiatives do well to identify some important AI ethics issues, but they fall short by neglecting the ethical importance of nonhumans. This short paper calls for AI ethics to better account for nonhumans, such as by giving initiatives names like “AI for …

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May Newsletter: Call For Advisees & Collaborators

Dear friends,

I’m pleased to announce that GCRI has recently launched an open call for advisees and collaborators. If you are interested in working with GCRI, or if you would simply like some advice from us on how you can get involved in global catastrophic risk, then please don’t hesitate to reach out. We welcome inquiries from people at all career points, from students to senior scholars and professionals. Please see our blog post for details.

Sincerely,

Seth BaumExecutive Director

Planetary Defense

GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum gave a talk titled …

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Why Catastrophes Can Change the Course of Humanity

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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March Newsletter: Policy 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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February Newsletter: Nuclear War Risk Analysis

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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BBC On Short-Termism And Long-Term Trajectories

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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August Newsletter: Long-Term Trajectories

Dear friends,

This month I am proud to announce a new paper, “Long-Term Trajectories of Human Civilization“. The paper calls for attention to the fate of human civilization over time scales of millions, billions, or trillions of years into the future. While most attention goes to nearer-term phenomena, the long-term can be profoundly important to present-day decision-making. For example, one major issue the paper examines is the fate of global catastrophe survivors. How well they fare is a central factor in whether people today should focus …

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