The Inaugural 2021 GCRI Fellowship Program

Post Date November 13, 2021
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GCRI is delighted to announce the formation of a new Fellowship Program and the members of the inaugural 2021 GCRI Fellowship class. The Fellowship Program recognizes a select group of 12 individuals who have made exceptional contributions to addressing global catastrophic risk in collaboration with GCRI during the year 2021.

The 2021 GCRI Fellows range from undergraduates to senior professionals and hail from seven countries around the world. Their contributions include research across a diverse range of disciplines, policy outreach, program development, and more. We at …

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August Newsletter: Long-Term Trajectories

Post Date August 15, 2018
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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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May Newsletter: Molecular Nanotechnology

Post Date May 22, 2018
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Dear friends,

It has been a productive month for GCRI, with new papers by several of our affiliates. Here, I would like to highlight one by Steven Umbrello and myself, on the topic of molecular nanotechnology, also known as atomically precise manufacturing (APM).

At present, APM exists only in a crude form, such as the work recognized by the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. However, it may be able to revolutionize manufacturing, making it inexpensive and easy to produce a wide range of goods, resulting in what …

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January Newsletter: Superintelligence & Hawaii False Alarm

Post Date January 29, 2018
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Dear friends,

This month marks the release of Superintelligence, a special issue of the journal Informatica co-edited by GCRI’s Matthijs Maas and Roman Yampolskiy along with Ryan Carey and Nell Watson. It contains an interesting mix of papers on AI risk. One of the papers is “Modeling and Interpreting Expert Disagreement About Artificial Superintelligence”, co-authored by Yampolskiy, Tony Barrett, and myself. This paper applies our ASI-PATH risk model to an ongoing debate between two leading AI risk experts, Nick Bostrom and Ben Goertzel. It shows how risk analysis can capture …

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December Newsletter: Year in Review

Post Date December 27, 2017
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Dear friends,

It has been another productive year for GCRI. Though we have a limited budget, we’ve made major contributions to global catastrophic risk research. Here are some highlights:

* GCRI hosted its largest-ever series of symposia on global catastrophic risk at the 2017 Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) conference, prompting SRA to encourage us to lead the formation of an official global catastrophic risk group within SRA.

* GCRI affiliates presented at numerous other events throughout the year, including dedicated catastrophic risk events at UCLA and Gothenburg.

* …

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May Newsletter: The Value of GCR Research

Post Date May 12, 2017
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Dear friends,

People often ask me why we set GCRI up as a think tank instead of something for more direct action at reducing the risk. The reason is that when it comes to the global catastrophic risks, a little bit of well-designed research goes a long way. It helps us make better decisions about how to reduce the risks.

For example, last week I attended a political science workshop at Yale University on how to cost-effectively spend $10 billion to reduce the probability of war between …

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Call for Papers: Informatica Special Issue on Superintelligence

Post Date April 24, 2017
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GCRI associate Roman Yampolskiy and junior associate Matthijs Maas are—along with Ryan Carey and Nell Watson—guest-editing an upcoming Informatica special issue on superintelligence. The special issue will approach the topic of superintelligence in as multidisciplinary and visionary a manner as possible.

They are looking for original research, critical studies, and review articles on topics related to superintelligence, in particular including

– Artificial Superintelligence
– Artificial General Intelligence
– Biological Superintelligence
– Brain-computer Interfaces
– Whole Brain Emulation
– Genetic Engineering
– Cognitive Enhancement
– Collective Superintelligence
– Neural Lace-Mediated Empathy
– Technological Singularity
– Intelligence Explosion
– Definition …

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January Newsletter

Post Date January 06, 2017
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Conferences

GCRI Director of Research Tony Barrett led a symposium on global catastrophic risk at the 2016 meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis, December 11-15 in San Diego. The 2016 GCRI symposium featured five talks focused on risks from AI and nuclear weapons. These included Barrett’s presentation, “Technology Forecasting for Analyzing Future Global Catastrophic Risks” and GCRI Associate Roman Yampolskiy’s presentation, “Artificial General Intelligence Risk Analysis”. SRA is the premier academic and professional society for risk analysis. GCRI has led symposia at SRA since 2010.

GCRI Associate Matthijs …

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