Menu

Blog

Archive for the ‘existential risks’ category: Page 20

Jan 4, 2023

NASA’s plan to identify dangerous asteroids takes a major step forward

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, economics, existential risks

The NEO Surveyor will be able to detect individual asteroid heat signatures.


NEO Surveyor is, as the name implies, a satellite specifically designed to survey objects near the Earth (NEO). One of its primary contributions will be to look for asteroids and other small bodies that are potentially on an eventual collision course with Earth but are invisible to typical NEO survey missions because of their location in the solar system.

Continue reading “NASA’s plan to identify dangerous asteroids takes a major step forward” »

Jan 3, 2023

Chicxulub crater might be the smoking gun for the dinosaurs’ end of days

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

Forged 66 million years ago, an enormous impact crater near Chixculub, Mexico, was left undiscovered until only a few short decades ago. But what caused it?

Millions of years ago, a dramatic mass extinction wiped out the dinosaurs.

Continue reading “Chicxulub crater might be the smoking gun for the dinosaurs’ end of days” »

Jan 1, 2023

Jerome C. Glenn

Posted by in categories: existential risks, lifeboat

The Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award is annually bestowed upon a respected scientist or public figure who has warned of a future fraught with dangers and encouraged measures to prevent them.

For the first time since 2006, we have two joint recipients of the Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award. This year’s recipients are Jerome C. Glenn and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who are defending against world existential risks and country existential risks, respectively.


Jerome C. Glenn and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are winners of the 2022 Guardian Award.

Continue reading “Jerome C. Glenn” »

Jan 1, 2023

Genomics pioneer George Church, former Kindred Bio execs launch CRISPR-designed pets company AdoraPet Biosciences

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, existential risks, genetics

A Peninsula biotech startup cofounded by pioneering geneticist George Church — who already is working to engineer the woolly mammoth out of extinction — is trying to raise as much as $5 million in a crowdfunding effort to design healthier, longer-living pets.

AdoraPet Biosciences Inc. of San Mateo plans to apply the genome-engineering CRISPR technology at the egg stage of dogs and cats or insert CRISPR-modified DNA into eggs, to make nonallergenic pets that don’t shed and ultimately live longer, are free of genetic diseases caused by inbreeding and are resistant to cancer and other serious diseases.

Dec 31, 2022

Why The Creative Economy Shouldn’t Fear Generative A.I.

Posted by in categories: economics, existential risks, robotics/AI

Artificial intelligence is all over the news. When ChatGPT, OpenAI’s new chatbot, was released last month it seemed, finally, to match the hype that generative A.I. has been promising for years—an easy-to-use machine intelligence for the general public.

Wild predictions soon followed: The death of search engines, the end of homework, the hollowing-out of creative professions.


For the creative professions, the rise of generative A.I. feels like an existential threat. But a familiar technology, invented 184 years ago, can show us how to adapt and thrive in a new reality.

Continue reading “Why The Creative Economy Shouldn’t Fear Generative A.I.” »

Dec 29, 2022

There Are Spying Eyes Everywhere—and Now They Share a Brain

Posted by in categories: existential risks, government, habitats, internet, neuroscience, security, surveillance

One afternoon in the fall of 2019, in a grand old office building near the Arc de Triomphe, I was buzzed through an unmarked door into a showroom for the future of surveillance. The space on the other side was dark and sleek, with a look somewhere between an Apple Store and a doomsday bunker. Along one wall, a grid of electronic devices glinted in the moody downlighting—automated license plate readers, Wi-Fi-enabled locks, boxy data processing units. I was here to meet Giovanni Gaccione, who runs the public safety division of a security technology company called Genetec. Headquartered in Montreal, the firm operates four of these “Experience Centers” around the world, where it peddles intelligence products to government officials. Genetec’s main sell here was software, and Gaccione had agreed to show me how it worked.

He led me first to a large monitor running a demo version of Citigraf, his division’s flagship product. The screen displayed a map of the East Side of Chicago. Around the edges were thumbnail-size video streams from neighborhood CCTV cameras. In one feed, a woman appeared to be unloading luggage from a car to the sidewalk. An alert popped up above her head: “ILLEGAL PARKING.” The map itself was scattered with color-coded icons—a house on fire, a gun, a pair of wrestling stick figures—each of which, Gaccione explained, corresponded to an unfolding emergency. He selected the stick figures, which denoted an assault, and a readout appeared onscreen with a few scant details drawn from the 911 dispatch center. At the bottom was a button marked “INVESTIGATE,” just begging to be clicked.

Dec 21, 2022

Cybernetic Theory: The Code of Reality & Our Future as Cybergods

Posted by in categories: cosmology, existential risks, physics, robotics/AI, singularity, transhumanism, virtual reality

In this talk titled CYBERNETIC THEORY: THE CODE OF REALITY & OUR FUTURE AS CYBERGODS at the Rotary Club, The Grand Autograph Hotel, Novosibirsk, Russia, on July 19, 2022, I go over many topics such as evolutionary cybernetics, Digital Physics, consciousness, philosophy of mind, cybernetic theory, Omega Point cosmology, physics of time, simulation theory, the Global Mind, AGI, VR, Metaverse, Cybernetic Singularity, transhumanism, posthumanism, cybernetic immortality, synthetic telepathy, mind-uploading, neurotechnologies, Fermi Paradox, the Dark Universe (Dark Matter and Dark Energy), the Argument for Cybertheism. The main 45-minute slide presentation is followed by a 15-minute Q&A session… More.


Russian-American futurist Alex M. Vikoulov presents his published works in a talk titled CYBERNETIC THEORY: THE CODE OF REALITY & OUR FUTURE AS CYBERGODS at the Rotary Club, The Grand Autograph Hotel, Novosibirsk, Russia, on July 19, 2022. The main 45-min.

Continue reading “Cybernetic Theory: The Code of Reality & Our Future as Cybergods” »

Dec 19, 2022

Scientists discover what was on the menu of the first dinosaurs

Posted by in categories: computing, existential risks, food

The earliest dinosaurs included carnivorous, omnivorous and herbivorous species, according to a team of University of Bristol paleobiologists.

By looking at the tooth shapes of the earliest dinosaurs and simulating their tooth function with computational modeling, experts were able to compare them to living reptiles and their diets. Their findings, published December 16 in Science Advances, show that many groups of plant-eating dinosaurs were ancestrally omnivorous and that the ancestors of our famous long-necked herbivores, such as Diplodocus, ate meat. This ability to diversify their diets early in their evolution likely explains their evolutionary and ecological success.

The earliest dinosaurs are enigmatic: they were much smaller than their later relatives and for most of the Triassic they were in the shadow of the crocodile-like reptiles. It is unknown how diverse they were in terms of diets and ecology, but scientists know something must have happened in the Triassic that allowed dinosaurs to endure the Triassic–Jurassic mass extinction and adapt in its aftermath, becoming the for the rest of the Mesozoic.

Dec 19, 2022

The Fermi Paradox: Extinction

Posted by in categories: alien life, evolution, existential risks

Start listening with a 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook plus two Audible Originals are free. Visit.
http://www.audible.com/isaac or text “ISAAC” to 500–500.
The Fermi Paradox ask us how in a Universe so vast and ancient we seem to be the only intelligent civilization around, with no older interstellar alien empires visible in the galaxy. But could extinction play a role in that, or might extinction events instead drive evolution forward?

Visit our Website: http://www.isaacarthur.net.
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IsaacArthur.
SFIA Merchandise available: https://www.signil.com/sfia/

Continue reading “The Fermi Paradox: Extinction” »

Dec 16, 2022

Aliens likely haven’t visited because humanity’s technological signature is very limited

Posted by in categories: alien life, existential risks

There are likely many exciting alien worlds for extraterrestrials to visit.

Now that more and more scientists are actively searching for signs of extraterrestrial life, whether in our solar system or in the far reaches of space, more attention has been brought to the Fermi paradox.

A new study in preprint server arXiv suggests that we might not have encountered intelligent extraterrestrials because they may not find humanity very interesting.

Continue reading “Aliens likely haven’t visited because humanity’s technological signature is very limited” »

Page 20 of 135First1718192021222324Last