tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/future-of-humanity-7699/articlesFuture of humanity – The Conversation2022-12-30T08:27:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1955932022-12-30T08:27:09Z2022-12-30T08:27:09ZFive human technologies inspired by nature – from velcro to racing cars<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500467/original/file-20221212-114007-p3m533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3055%2C2024&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many of humanity's innovations have taken inspiration from the natural world.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/great-white-shark-carcharodon-carcharias-surface-1706225779">Alessandro De Maddalena/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nature has, over millions of years, evolved solutions to adapt to an array of challenges. As the challenges facing humanity become more complex, we are seeing inspiration being increasingly drawn from nature. </p>
<p>Taking biological processes and applying them to technological and design problems is called <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/bioinspiration">bioinspiration</a>. This is a fast-growing field, and our ability to copy nature is becoming more sophisticated. Here are five striking examples where nature has guided human innovation – and in some cases, could lead to even more exciting breakthroughs. </p>
<h2>1. Navigation</h2>
<p>Using <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/bats/echolocation.htm">echolocation</a>, bats are able to fly in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128093245210316">complete darkness</a>. They emit sound and ultrasound waves, then monitor the time and magnitude of these waves’ reflections to create <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1071581907000833">three-dimensional spatial maps</a> of their surroundings. </p>
<p>The sensors that identify obstacles when reversing in many modern cars are <a href="https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/tb/pub/features/articles/36374">inspired</a> by bat navigation. The direction and distance of an obstacle is calculated by emitting ultrasound waves which reflect off objects in a car’s path.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498452/original/file-20221201-6347-cjueta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498452/original/file-20221201-6347-cjueta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498452/original/file-20221201-6347-cjueta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498452/original/file-20221201-6347-cjueta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498452/original/file-20221201-6347-cjueta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498452/original/file-20221201-6347-cjueta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498452/original/file-20221201-6347-cjueta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The echolocation concept has been adopted by many technologies in modern life, Amin Al-Habaibeh, Author provided.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sensory navigation technologies have also been <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050915031312">proposed</a> to improve the safety of those with restricted vision. Ultrasound sensors installed on the human body would offer sound-based feedback of a person’s surroundings. This would allow them to move more freely by eliminating the threat of obstacles.</p>
<h2>2. Construction equipment</h2>
<p>Woodpeckers <a href="https://www.batzner.com/resources/blog-posts/why-woodpeckers-peck-and-prevent-them-from-pecking-your-house/#:%7E:text=They%20peck%20at%20wood%20to,is%20attached%20to%20a%20building.">knock</a> on the hard surface of trees to forage for food, build nests and attract a mate. Construction tools, such as handheld hydraulic and pneumatic hammers, mimic the <a href="https://apologeticspress.org/the-jackhammer-in-your-backyard-2315/">vibrating bill of a woodpecker</a> using a frequency roughly equivalent to a woodpecker’s hammering (<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1672652914600457">20 to 25 Hz</a>). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woodpecker feeding chicks in its nest in a hole of a tree." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499263/original/file-20221206-25-zf8fph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499263/original/file-20221206-25-zf8fph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499263/original/file-20221206-25-zf8fph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499263/original/file-20221206-25-zf8fph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499263/original/file-20221206-25-zf8fph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499263/original/file-20221206-25-zf8fph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499263/original/file-20221206-25-zf8fph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Woodpeckers knock on the hard surface of trees to forage for food, build nests and attract a mate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/great-spotted-woodpecker-dendrocopos-major-perched-2060062277">Vaclav Matous/Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>But the vibration of these power tools can damage the hands of construction workers. This can, in some cases, cause <a href="https://www.hse.gov.uk/mvr/topics/vibration.htm">vibration white finger</a>, a condition where sufferers experience permanent numbness and pain in their hands and arms. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960982222009964">Research</a> is now studying how woodpeckers protect their brains from the impact of repeated drilling. One <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S175161611830688X?via%3Dihub">study</a> found that woodpeckers have several impact-absorbing adaptions that other birds do not have. </p>
<p>Their skull is adapted to be tough and hard, and their tongue wraps around the back of the skull and anchors between their eyes. This protects a woodpecker’s brain by softening the impact of the hammering and its vibrations.</p>
<p>Research such as this is guiding the design of <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/22/10584/htm">shock absorbers and vibration control devices</a> to protect the users of such equipment. The same concept has also inspired innovations such as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214785319341987">layered shock-absorbing structures</a> for building design.</p>
<h2>3. Building design</h2>
<p>Scallops are molluscs with a fan-shaped, corrugated external shell. The zig-zag shape of these <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/corrugated-sheet">corrugations</a> strengthens the shell’s structure, enabling it to withstand high pressure under water.</p>
<p>The same process is used to increase the strength of a cardboard box, with corrugated paper material being glued between the two external cardboard layers. The introduction of a corrugated surface significantly increases a material’s strength, in the same way that folding a piece of paper into a zig-zag shape allows it to take an additional load.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498782/original/file-20221204-55844-i0v9vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498782/original/file-20221204-55844-i0v9vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498782/original/file-20221204-55844-i0v9vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498782/original/file-20221204-55844-i0v9vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498782/original/file-20221204-55844-i0v9vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498782/original/file-20221204-55844-i0v9vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498782/original/file-20221204-55844-i0v9vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A folded piece of paper in a zig-zag shape could withstand heavy load. Amin Al-Habaibeh, Author provided.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The dome-shaped structure of a scallop’s shell also enables it to withstand significant loads. This structure is self-supporting as it distributes the weight evenly over the entire dome shape, reducing the load on a single point. This improves the structure’s stability without the need for reinforcing steel beams and has inspired the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378778821003182">design of many buildings</a>, including St Paul’s Cathedral in London. </p>
<h2>4. Transport aerodynamics</h2>
<p>Sharks have two dorsal fins which provide several aerodynamic advantages. They <a href="https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/sharks/anatomy/fins-swimming/#:%7E:text=Dorsal%20fins%20stabilize%20the%20shark,and%20helping%20to%20conserve%20energy.">stabilise the shark</a> from rolling, while their aerofoil shape creates an area of low turbulence behind them and so increases the efficiency of the shark’s forward movement. </p>
<p>Shark fins have been replicated in motorised transportation. For example, racing cars use fins to both reduce turbulence when travelling at high speed and <a href="https://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a28497386/shark-fin-race-car-wing-explained/">improve stability</a> when cornering. </p>
<p>Many road cars now have a small “shark fin” installed on their roof, which is used to integrate their <a href="https://natalexauto.com/blogs/natalex-auto-blog/what-is-the-shark-fin-on-the-roof-of-a-car">radio antenna</a>. This reduces drag compared to the traditional pole antenna.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498796/original/file-20221204-55991-d268zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498796/original/file-20221204-55991-d268zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498796/original/file-20221204-55991-d268zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498796/original/file-20221204-55991-d268zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498796/original/file-20221204-55991-d268zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498796/original/file-20221204-55991-d268zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498796/original/file-20221204-55991-d268zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shark-fin antenna in a modern car. Amin Al-Habaibeh. Author provided.</span>
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</figure>
<p>We have also taken inspiration from nature to increase the efficiency of aircraft flight. An owl’s wings act as a <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.1748">suspension system</a>; by changing the position, shape and angle of their wings, they are able to <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.1748">reduce the effect</a> of turbulence while in flight. And <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-and-technology/2021/03/owl-wings-may-hold-the-key-to-turbulence-proof-planes">research</a> into owl flight may open the door to turbulence-free air travel in the future.</p>
<h2>5. Velcro</h2>
<p>The hook-and-loop <a href="https://www.velcro.co.uk/blog/2018/06/how-do-velcro-brand-fasteners-work/#:%7E:text=Hook%20and%20loop%20fasteners%20have,and%20loop%20fastener%20will%20be.">fastening mechanism</a> of <a href="https://www.velcro.com/news-and-blog/2016/11/an-idea-that-stuck-how-george-de-mestral-invented-the-velcro-fastener/">velcro</a> was inspired by the ability of the burrs of burdock plants to fasten to human clothing.</p>
<p>Plants use burrs to <a href="https://homeguides.sfgate.com/plants-burrs-26416.html">attach seed pods</a> to passing animals and people, in order to disperse seeds over wider areas. Burrs possess small hooks that interlock with the small loops in soft material.</p>
<p>Velcro replicates this by using a strip lined with hooks together with a fabric strip. When pressed together, the hooks attach to the loops and fasten to one another. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498799/original/file-20221204-25475-ps5jqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498799/original/file-20221204-25475-ps5jqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498799/original/file-20221204-25475-ps5jqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498799/original/file-20221204-25475-ps5jqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498799/original/file-20221204-25475-ps5jqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498799/original/file-20221204-25475-ps5jqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498799/original/file-20221204-25475-ps5jqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hook and Loop structure under the microscope. Amin Al-Habaibeh, Author provided.</span>
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</figure>
<p>Velcro is used in a wide range of products worldwide. According to <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/home/myth_tang.html#:%7E:text=Velcro%20was%20used%20during%20the,associated%20with%20the%20Space%20Program.">Nasa</a>, it was used in space during the Apollo missions from 1961 to 1972 to fix equipment in place in zero gravity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195593/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amin Al-Habaibeh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Humans often look to nature for the solutions to complex problems – here are five times where biological processes have inspired innovation.Amin Al-Habaibeh, Professor of Intelligent Engineering Systems, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1543252021-02-23T18:16:32Z2021-02-23T18:16:32ZEarth’s existential threats: inequality, pandemics and climate change demand global leadership<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385050/original/file-20210218-12-isz96u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C4992%2C2754&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Future of the planet is in our hands.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PopTika/Nasa</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Asked in 2003, the UK’s astronomer royal, Martin Rees, gave our present society <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/18/17886974/science-technology-climate-change-existential-threats-martin-rees">50/50 odds</a> of lasting until the end of the century. It’s fair to say the odds haven’t improved in the years since he made this call. The planet is warming, a pandemic runs wild, the threat of nuclear war still hangs overhead and emerging technologies are allowing for the development of new weapons of mass destruction. Existential threats to human existence are growing – and the time left to address them <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/">gets ever shorter</a>.</p>
<p>So the new presidential term in the world’s most powerful nation takes on a special significance. The Biden-Harris administration cannot tackle the global challenges we face alone, but the US will be pivotal to efforts to wind back the <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/">doomsday clock</a>. Joe Biden made his agenda clear in a short passage of his inaugural speech: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A once-in-a-century virus silently stalks the country … A cry for racial justice, some 400 years in the making, moves us … A cry for survival comes from the planet itself … The rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism, that we must confront, and we will defeat.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After the Trump years, these new political commitments from the world’s dominant power are welcome. Yet this rhetoric reveals a flaw in Biden’s conception of the threats facing the world. Each issue is treated as a distinct challenge. But our <a href="https://www.cser.ac.uk/research/">research on catastrophic risks</a> reveals that such threats are actually deeply interconnected. Threats facing humanity are a <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-10-catastrophic-threats-facing-humans-right-now-and-coronavirus-is-only-one-of-them-136854">many-headed Hydra</a> – they are all parts of the same beast.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-10-catastrophic-threats-facing-humans-right-now-and-coronavirus-is-only-one-of-them-136854">There are 10 catastrophic threats facing humans right now, and coronavirus is only one of them</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Threat and inequality</h2>
<p>The catastrophic risks are held together by a sinew of racial, gender, economic and political inequalities that simultaneously <a href="http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Global_Risks_Report_2021.pdf">exacerbate each threat</a> and <a href="https://www.rips-irsp.com/articles/10.5334/irsp.356/">block potential action</a> to address them. Take the climate crisis. Desertification, land degradation and extreme weather disproportionately affect the world’s poorest countries and are estimated to have <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/20/9808">increased international inequality</a> by 25% in the past 50 years.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Climate activists carrying signs demanding action." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385852/original/file-20210223-14-19mmf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385852/original/file-20210223-14-19mmf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385852/original/file-20210223-14-19mmf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385852/original/file-20210223-14-19mmf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385852/original/file-20210223-14-19mmf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385852/original/file-20210223-14-19mmf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385852/original/file-20210223-14-19mmf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Climate change is a global concern.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">DisobeyArt via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But inequality also drives climate change. The richest 10% of the global population are responsible for <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/confronting-carbon-inequality">more than 52%</a> of all emissions. Globally, carbon dioxide emissions track GDP growth with <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964">remarkable tenacity</a>. </p>
<p>Higher inequality means less of the benefits of growth accrue to those at the bottom. More growth, and therefore emissions, are <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y">then required</a> to meet the material needs of the world’s population. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry has <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0489-6">stymied action</a> with its constant lobbying and sowing of doubt about the connection between fossil fuels and climate change. These factors together threaten to lock us into a downward spiral of worsening inequality and climate breakdown. </p>
<p>A similar story can be told about other threats. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities both <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2020/09/COVID19-and-global-inequality-joseph-stiglitz.htm#:%7E:text=International%20dimensions,as%20it%20has%20within%20countries.&text=Without%20it%2C%20the%20global%20pandemic,there%20will%20be%20global%20divergence.">between and within countries</a>. Social distancing is made more difficult the further down the economic scale you are. And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/business/coronavirus-vaccines-global-economy.html">access to vaccines</a> seems to follow the same pattern, especially on an international scale. </p>
<p>Or consider artificial intelligence (AI). The increasing capabilities of AI technologies pose a threat to the global political order. These include the use of facial recognition to empower surveillance states, worsening disinformation, the large-scale use of lethal autonomous weapons (<a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-has-already-been-weaponised-and-it-shows-why-we-should-ban-killer-robots-102736">killer robots</a>) and – more speculatively and long-term – the potential development of an “<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/an-executive-primer-on-artificial-general-intelligence">artificial general intelligence</a>” as smart and capable as humans, with all the dystopian possibilities that conjures up. Big tech firms such as Google and Facebook have a disproportionate influence in the development and regulation of many of these technologies and applications. This has allowed them to monopolise the benefits while passing the risks on to everyone else.</p>
<h2>Looking for global leadership</h2>
<p>These connections between threats and inequality are a global phenomenon. Solutions need to be similarly global. On climate change, rejoining the Paris Agreement is a necessary step for the new US administration – but it’s not enough. Most urgently, Biden must work to reconcile bipartisan anti-China sentiment with the reality that China is now a major player in climate politics and must be factored into any solutions. </p>
<p>But there is much more the US, and indeed other rich countries, can do. Both by addressing their own emissions, but also building international partnerships to provide developing countries with the financing and technology required for energy transition. Instead of locking lower income countries into the fragile position of relying on commodity exports to maintain their economies, these efforts should assist countries in diversifying into high value-added industries needed in the new green economy and provide them with greater control over their economic development as partners in the global low-carbon economy. </p>
<p>Biden can <a href="https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2020/12/biden-the-bank-and-imf-a-break-with-america-first-or-its-continued-pursuit-through-multilateral-means/">leverage America’s position</a> in international financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to tackle the debt crisis that not only prevents poorer countries from taking action to mitigate climate change and adapt to its impacts, but has also stymied their COVID-19 relief efforts. </p>
<p>The regulation of big tech is another key battleground. Australia’s recent attempts to spread the profits from tech monopolies provoked a public retaliation from Facebook, which <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-56165015">temporarily blocked</a> access to Australian news content on its site.</p>
<p>These events are a stark reminder of the power of big tech, and it is this same power that must be limited in the context of <a href="https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/govai/">AI governance</a>. The US has a stake in these issues, and it must play its part in reducing the risks associated with the development and deployment of AI by international corporations.</p>
<p>In this area and many others, coordinated international approaches are needed to address the links between threats and inequalities pushing our civilisation towards collapse. Such efforts should be at the top of the Biden-Harris agenda.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154325/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacob Ainscough receives funding from Thirty Percy.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex McLaughlin receives funding from the British Academy</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Kemp's work is funded by the Templeton Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalie Jones' work is funded by the Isaac Newton Trust. </span></em></p>The US mustn’t make the mistake of tackling these threats separately – or of trying to take a unilateral approach.Jacob Ainscough, Research Assistant, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of CambridgeAlex McLaughlin, Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of CambridgeLuke Kemp, Lecturer in International Relations and Environmental Policy, Australian National UniversityNatalie Jones, Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1530912021-01-13T05:00:06Z2021-01-13T05:00:06ZWorried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378461/original/file-20210113-21-rwemte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5568%2C3692&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Mariuz/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anyone with even a passing interest in the global environment knows all is not well. But just how bad is the situation? Our new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood. </p>
<p>The research <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full">published today</a> reviews more than 150 studies to produce a stark summary of the state of the natural world. We outline the likely future trends in biodiversity decline, mass extinction, climate disruption and planetary toxification. We clarify the gravity of the human predicament and provide a timely snapshot of the crises that must be addressed now. </p>
<p>The problems, all tied to human consumption and population growth, will almost certainly worsen over coming decades. The damage will be felt for centuries and threatens the survival of all species, including our own.</p>
<p>Our paper was authored by 17 leading scientists, including those from Flinders University, Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles. Our message might not be popular, and indeed is frightening. But scientists must be candid and accurate if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Girl in breathing mask attached ot plant in container" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378462/original/file-20210113-21-1vk2ung.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378462/original/file-20210113-21-1vk2ung.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378462/original/file-20210113-21-1vk2ung.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378462/original/file-20210113-21-1vk2ung.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378462/original/file-20210113-21-1vk2ung.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378462/original/file-20210113-21-1vk2ung.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378462/original/file-20210113-21-1vk2ung.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Humanity must come to terms with the future we and future generations face.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Getting to grips with the problem</h2>
<p>First, we reviewed the extent to which experts grasp the scale of the threats to the biosphere and its lifeforms, including humanity. Alarmingly, the research shows future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than experts currently believe.</p>
<p>This is largely because academics tend to specialise in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15487733.2007.11907989">one discipline</a>, which means they’re in many cases unfamiliar with the <a href="https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/fragile-dominion-by-simon-levin-and-simon-a-levin-9780738203195">complex system</a> in which planetary-scale problems — and their potential solutions — exist. </p>
<p>What’s more, positive change can be impeded by governments <a href="https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embr.201643381">rejecting</a> or ignoring scientific advice, and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0884-z">ignorance of human behaviour</a> by both technical experts and policymakers.</p>
<p>More broadly, the human <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0884-z">optimism bias</a> – thinking bad things are more likely to befall others than yourself – means many people underestimate the environmental crisis. </p>
<h2>Numbers don’t lie</h2>
<p>Our research also reviewed the current state of the global environment. While the problems are too numerous to cover in full here, they include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25138">halving</a> of vegetation biomass since the agricultural revolution around 11,000 years ago. Overall, humans have altered almost <a href="https://ipbes.net/global-assessment">two-thirds</a> of Earth’s land surface</p></li>
<li><p>about <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6471/eaax3100">1,300 documented</a> <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0906-2">species extinctions</a> over the past 500 years, with many more unrecorded. More broadly, population sizes of animal species have declined by more than <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/living-planet-report-2020">two-thirds</a> over the last 50 years, suggesting more extinctions are imminent</p></li>
</ul>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-mass-extinction-and-are-we-in-one-now-122535">What is a 'mass extinction' and are we in one now?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<ul>
<li><p>about <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/">one million</a> plant and animal species globally threatened with extinction. The combined mass of wild mammals today is less than <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506">one-quarter</a> the mass before humans started colonising the planet. Insects are also <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-ento-011019-025151">disappearing rapidly</a> in many regions</p></li>
<li><p>85% of the global wetland area <a href="https://www.publish.csiro.au/mf/mf14173">lost</a> in 300 years, and more than 65% of the oceans <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8615">compromised</a> to some extent by humans</p></li>
<li><p>a halving of live coral cover on reefs in less than <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1674">200 years</a> and a decrease in seagrass extent by <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6471/eaax3100">10% per decade</a> over the last century. <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/113/48/13785">About 40%</a> of kelp forests have declined in abundance, and the number of large predatory fishes is <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1467-2979.2003.00103.x">fewer than 30%</a> of that a century ago.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378178/original/file-20210112-15-1ornvrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="State of the Earth's environment" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378178/original/file-20210112-15-1ornvrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378178/original/file-20210112-15-1ornvrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378178/original/file-20210112-15-1ornvrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378178/original/file-20210112-15-1ornvrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378178/original/file-20210112-15-1ornvrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378178/original/file-20210112-15-1ornvrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378178/original/file-20210112-15-1ornvrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Major environmental-change categories expressed as a percentage relative to intact baseline. Red indicates percentage of category damaged, lost or otherwise affected; blue indicates percentage intact, remaining or unaffected.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frontiers in Conservation Science</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A bad situation only getting worse</h2>
<p>The human population has reached <a href="https://www.prb.org/2020-world-population-data-sheet/">7.8 billion</a> – double what it was in 1970 – and is set to reach about 10 billion by 2050. More people equals more food insecurity, soil degradation, plastic pollution and biodiversity loss. </p>
<p>High population densities make pandemics more likely. They also drive overcrowding, unemployment, housing shortages and deteriorating infrastructure, and can spark conflicts leading to <a href="https://theconversation.com/by-inciting-capitol-mob-trump-pushes-u-s-closer-to-a-banana-republic-152850">insurrections</a>, terrorism, and war.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-why-we-need-to-focus-on-increased-consumption-as-much-as-population-growth-138602">Climate explained: why we need to focus on increased consumption as much as population growth</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Essentially, humans have created an ecological <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/ponzischeme.asp">Ponzi scheme</a>. Consumption, as a percentage of Earth’s <a href="https://www.footprintnetwork.org">capacity to regenerate itself</a>, has grown from 73% in 1960 to <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/7/3/58">more than 170% today</a>. </p>
<p>High-consuming countries like Australia, Canada and the US use multiple units of fossil-fuel energy to produce one energy unit of food. Energy consumption will therefore increase in the near future, especially as the global middle class grows.</p>
<p>Then there’s climate change. Humanity has already exceeded global warming of 1°C this century, and will almost assuredly <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/">exceed 1.5 °C</a> between 2030 and 2052. Even if all nations party to the <a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement">Paris Agreement</a> ratify their commitments, warming would still reach between 2.6°C and 3.1°C by 2100.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="people walking on a crowded street" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364900/original/file-20201022-18-iwc4eu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364900/original/file-20201022-18-iwc4eu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364900/original/file-20201022-18-iwc4eu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364900/original/file-20201022-18-iwc4eu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364900/original/file-20201022-18-iwc4eu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364900/original/file-20201022-18-iwc4eu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364900/original/file-20201022-18-iwc4eu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The human population is set to reach 10 billion by 2050.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The danger of political impotence</h2>
<p>Our paper found global policymaking falls far short of addressing these existential threats. Securing Earth’s future requires prudent, long-term decisions. However this is impeded by short-term interests, and an economic system that <a href="https://theconversation.com/piketty-challenges-us-to-consider-if-we-need-to-rein-in-wealth-inequality-67552">concentrates wealth among a few individuals</a>.</p>
<p>Right-wing populist leaders with <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07236-w">anti-environment agendas</a> are on the rise, and in many countries, environmental protest groups have been labelled “<a href="https://theconversation.com/extinction-rebellion-terror-threat-is-a-wake-up-call-for-how-the-state-treats-environmental-activism-129804">terrorists</a>”. Environmentalism has become weaponised as a political ideology, rather than properly viewed as a universal mode of self-preservation.</p>
<p>Financed <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-fossil-fuelled-climate-denial-61273">disinformation campaigns</a>, such as those against climate action and <a href="http://alert-conservation.org/issues-research-highlights/2014/11/27/progress-in-the-battle-against-illegal-logging">forest protection</a>, protect short-term profits and claim meaningful environmental action is too costly – while ignoring the broader cost of not acting. By and large, it appears unlikely business investments <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ecosoc6972.doc.htm">will shift at sufficient scale</a> to avoid environmental catastrophe.</p>
<h2>Changing course</h2>
<p>Fundamental change is required to avoid this ghastly future. Specifically, we and many others suggest: </p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/life-in-a-degrowth-economy-and-why-you-might-actually-enjoy-it-32224">abolishing</a> the goal of perpetual economic growth</p></li>
<li><p>revealing the true cost of products and activities by forcing those who damage the environment to pay for its restoration, such as through <a href="https://theconversation.com/carbon-pricing-works-the-largest-ever-study-puts-it-beyond-doubt-142034">carbon pricing</a></p></li>
<li><p>rapidly eliminating fossil fuels</p></li>
<li><p>regulating markets by curtailing monopolisation and limiting undue corporate influence on policy</p></li>
<li><p>reigning in corporate lobbying of political representatives</p></li>
<li><p>educating and <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/katharine_wilkinson_how_empowering_women_and_girls_can_help_stop_global_warming">empowering women</a> across the globe, including giving them control over family planning.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A coal plant" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378465/original/file-20210113-15-6b1vqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378465/original/file-20210113-15-6b1vqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378465/original/file-20210113-15-6b1vqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378465/original/file-20210113-15-6b1vqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378465/original/file-20210113-15-6b1vqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378465/original/file-20210113-15-6b1vqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378465/original/file-20210113-15-6b1vqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The true cost of environmental damage should be borne by those responsible.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Don’t look away</h2>
<p>Many organisations and individuals are devoted to achieving these aims. However their messages have not sufficiently penetrated the policy, economic, political and academic realms to make much difference.</p>
<p>Failing to acknowledge the magnitude of problems facing humanity is not just naïve, it’s dangerous. And science has a big role to play here. </p>
<p>Scientists must not sugarcoat the overwhelming challenges ahead. Instead, they should <em>tell it like it is</em>. Anything else is at best misleading, and at worst potentially lethal for the human enterprise.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mass-extinctions-and-climate-change-why-the-speed-of-rising-greenhouse-gases-matters-56675">Mass extinctions and climate change: why the speed of rising greenhouse gases matters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153091/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Corey J. A. Bradshaw receives funding from the Australian Research Council. The Rockefeller Foundation provided funding for elements of this research via a Bellagio Writer's Fellowship to CJAB and PRE.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel T. Blumstein receives funding from the US National Science Foundation and the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Ehrlich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Humanity is destroying Earth’s ability to support complex life. But coming to grips with the magnitude of the problem is hard, even for experts.Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders UniversityDaniel T. Blumstein, Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los AngelesPaul Ehrlich, President, Center for Conservation Biology, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1368542020-04-22T02:08:10Z2020-04-22T02:08:10ZThere are 10 catastrophic threats facing humans right now, and coronavirus is only one of them<p>Four months in, this year has already been a remarkable showcase for existential and catastrophic risk. A severe drought, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50951043">devastating bushfires</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-does-bushfire-smoke-affect-our-health-6-things-you-need-to-know-130126">hazardous smoke</a>, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-27/how-long-until-drought-stricken-towns-run-out-of-water/11655124">towns running dry</a> – these events all demonstrate the consequences of human-induced climate change. </p>
<p>While the above may seem like isolated threats, they are parts of a larger puzzle of which the pieces are all interconnected. A report titled Surviving and Thriving in the 21st Century, published today by the Commission for the Human Future, has isolated ten potentially catastrophic threats to human survival. </p>
<p>Not prioritised over one another, these risks are:</p>
<ol>
<li>decline of natural resources, particularly water</li>
<li>collapse of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity</li>
<li>human population growth beyond Earth’s carrying capacity</li>
<li>global warming and human-induced climate change</li>
<li>chemical pollution of the Earth system, including the atmosphere and oceans</li>
<li>rising food insecurity and failing nutritional quality</li>
<li>nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction</li>
<li>pandemics of new and untreatable disease</li>
<li>the advent of powerful, uncontrolled new technology </li>
<li>national and global failure to understand and act preventatively on these risks.</li>
</ol>
<h2>The start of ongoing discussions</h2>
<p>The Commission for the Human Future formed last year, following earlier discussions within <a href="http://www.humansforsurvival.org/sites/default/files/J3015%20-Pathways%20past%20Precipice.pdf">emeritus faculty at the Australian National University</a> about the major risks faced by humanity, how they should be approached and how they might be solved. We hosted our first round-table discussion last month, bringing together more than 40 academics, thinkers and policy leaders.</p>
<p>The commission’s report states our species’ ability to cause mass harm to itself has been accelerating since the mid-20th century. Global trends in demographics, information, politics, warfare, climate, environmental damage and technology have culminated in an entirely new level of risk. </p>
<p>The risks emerging now are varied, global and complex. Each one poses a “significant” risk to human civilisation, a “<a href="http://www.global-catastrophic-risks.com/">catastrophic risk</a>”, or could actually extinguish the human species and is therefore an “<a href="https://concepts.effectivealtruism.org/concepts/existential-risks/">existential risk</a>”.</p>
<p>The risks are interconnected. They originate from the same basic causes and must be solved in ways that make no individual threat worse. This means many existing systems we take for granted, including our economic, food, energy, production and waste, community life and governance systems – along with our relationship with the Earth’s natural systems – must undergo searching examination and reform.</p>
<h2>COVID-19: a lesson in interconnection</h2>
<p>It’s tempting to examine these threats individually, and yet with the coronavirus crisis we see their interconnection. </p>
<p>The response to the coronavirus has had implications for climate change with <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavirus-causing-carbon-emissions-to-fall-but-not-for-long/">carbon pollution reduction</a>, increased discussion about <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/12/999186/covid-19-contact-tracing-surveillance-data-privacy-anonymity/">artificial intelligence and use of data</a> (<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-52157131/coronavirus-russia-uses-facial-recognition-to-tackle-covid-19">including facial recognition</a>), and changes to the landscape of <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-shows-we-are-not-at-all-prepared-for-the-security-threat-of-climate-change-136029">global security</a> particularly in the face of massive economic transition.</p>
<p>It’s not possible to “solve” COVID-19 without affecting other risks in some way.</p>
<h2>Shared future, shared approach</h2>
<p>The commission’s report does not aim to solve each risk, but rather to outline current thinking and identify unifying themes. <a href="https://www.science.org.au/supporting-science/science-policy-and-analysis">Understanding science, evidence and analysis</a> will be key to adequately addressing the threats and finding solutions. An <a href="https://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/356E27A3CE3FFEAACA2577C80012F997/$File/evidence_web.pdf">evidence-based approach to policy</a> has been needed for many years. Under-appreciating science and evidence leads to unmitigated risks, as we have seen with climate change.</p>
<p>The human future involves us all. Shaping it requires a collaborative, inclusive and diverse discussion. We should heed advice from political and social scientists on how to engage all people in this conversation.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-the-bushfires-to-coronavirus-our-old-normal-is-gone-forever-so-whats-next-134994">From the bushfires to coronavirus, our old 'normal' is gone forever. So what's next?</a>
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<p>Imagination, creativity and new narratives will be needed for challenges that test our civil society and humanity. The bushfire smoke over the summer was unprecedented, and COVID-19 is a new virus. </p>
<p>If our policymakers and government had spent more time using the available climate science to understand and then imagine the potential risks of the 2019-20 summer, we would have recognised the potential for a catastrophic season and would likely have been able to prepare better. Unprecedented events are not always unexpected.</p>
<h2>Prepare for the long road</h2>
<p>The short-termism of our <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190318-can-we-reinvent-democracy-for-the-long-term">political process needs to be circumvented</a>. We must consider how our actions today will resonate for generations to come. </p>
<p>The commission’s report highlights the failure of governments to address these threats and particularly notes the short-term thinking that has increasingly dominated Australian and global politics. This has seriously undermined our potential to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2020/jan/14/the-government-has-been-forced-to-talk-about-climate-change-so-its-taking-a-subtle-and-sinister-approach">decrease risks such as climate change</a>.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/listen-to-your-people-scott-morrison-the-bushfires-demand-a-climate-policy-reboot-129348">Listen to your people Scott Morrison: the bushfires demand a climate policy reboot</a>
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<p>The shift from short to longer term thinking can began at home and in our daily lives. We should make decisions today that acknowledge the future, and practise this not only in our own lives but also demand it of our policy makers. </p>
<p>We’re living in unprecedented times. The catastrophic and existential risks for humanity are serious and multifaceted. And this conversation is the most important one we have today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136854/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arnagretta Hunter is a board member of the Commission for the Human Future. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Hewson is Chair Commission for the Human Future</span></em></p>Other existential risks include the decline of natural resources (particularly water), human population growth beyond the Earth’s carrying capacity, and nuclear weapons.Arnagretta Hunter, ANU Human Futures Fellow 2020; Cardiologist and Physician., Australian National UniversityJohn Hewson, Professor and Chair, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1252522019-10-16T09:38:03Z2019-10-16T09:38:03ZWhat makes us happy? We analysed 200 years of written text to find the answer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297094/original/file-20191015-98661-1wb31w6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C6252%2C4177&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Researchers used a statistical algorithm to analyse written texts between 1820-2009 in four Western countries. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/high-angle-view-group-happy-multiethnic-144639305?src=f5vsLLrvNeDYZv-lYyrdAg-1-0">sirtravelalot/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>How do you measure happiness? The answer to this question has eluded philosophers, scientists, and researchers for years. As happiness is a subjective feeling, it’s difficult to find a way of objectively measuring it. One of the most common methods for measuring happiness is through self-report surveys and polls, such as the UN’s <a href="https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2018/">World Happiness Report</a> uses. </p>
<p>But when it comes to understanding how our happiness ranks when compared to previous generations, researchers have had an equally difficult time finding methods to measure it. Academics studying the past usually use a method called “close reading” – a thoughtful, critical analysis of a text – which allows them to gain a deeper understanding of how authors might have been feeling at the time they wrote these texts. Psychologists have confirmed this, and know that what a person says or writes can often reveal much about <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-with-depression-use-language-differently-heres-how-to-spot-it-90877">their underlying happiness</a>. </p>
<p>But what if you could read every book that was ever written in order to develop an understanding of what it was really like to live through the last 200 years of history? </p>
<p>My colleagues and I <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0750-z">recently conducted research</a> that has taken a first step towards developing a quantitative picture of happiness throughout history. We developed a method that was able to analyse online texts from millions of fiction and non-fiction books and newspapers published over the past 200 years. </p>
<p>We did this by applying a statistical algorithm to millions of digitised historical texts in order to understand how happy writers were at the time of writing. This is called “sentiment analysis”, which measures how frequently an author uses positive and negative words to express their emotional attitude. More positive words, like “love”, “happiness”, and “celebration” indicate more positive feelings, whereas more negative words like “death”, “anger”, and “sadness” indicate negative feelings.</p>
<p>As some words have changed their meanings over time, we also took this into account when analysing words and their meanings. For example, words like “gay” and “risk” have changed their valence over time – in this case, both becoming more negative. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-with-depression-use-language-differently-heres-how-to-spot-it-90877">People with depression use language differently – here's how to spot it</a>
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<p>By analysing the language used in written texts from four Western countries – the UK, US, Italy and Germany – we were able to create a quantitative picture of historical subjective well-being, which we called the “National Valence Index”.</p>
<p>The National Valence Index is able to compute the relative levels of happiness or unhappiness by looking at the language used in any text in any given year. By comparing this against the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDetail/search/well-being/surveyKy/963">Eurobarometer survey data on subjective well-being</a>, our measure appears to be reasonably reliable. We then use the National Valence Index to look at how wars, and economic and health changes over the last 200 years have impacted overall happiness. </p>
<h2>Happiness then and now</h2>
<p>What we found was remarkable. While gross domestic product (GDP) is often assumed to be associated with a rise in well-being, we found that its effect on well-being throughout history is marginal at best. GDP has increased fairly consistently over the last 200 years in the four countries that we looked at, but well-being has moved up and down dramatically over that time. </p>
<p>What is perhaps most remarkable is that well-being appears to be incredibly resilient to short-term negative events. Wars create dramatic valleys in well-being, but soon after the war well-being frequently recovers to its pre-war levels. Lasting changes to our measure of happiness occur slowly, over generations.</p>
<p>Our study found that Germany is at its happiest in the 1800s, and just after World War II. Similarly high values are also found in the other nations during the 1800s. However, these values might not be entirely accurate, as writers during the Victorian Age were typically of a higher class, and the topics they wrote about and language they used was different to now. Germany, however, has seen a rise in subjective happiness since the 1970s. </p>
<p>In the UK, the <a href="https://libcom.org/history/1978-1979-winter-of-discontent">Winter of Discontent</a>, in the late 1970s, is the lowest point of well-being and happiness we measured, which began to fall during the 1950s. The nation was happiest during the interwar years in the 1920s, and at the end of World War II. </p>
<p>In the US, happiness was affected by events such as the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the Korean War. The US was happiest in the 1920s, before the Great Depression and World War II caused well-being to plummet. </p>
<p>Italy was similarly affected by the world wars, but has seen a steady increase in subjective well-being since the 1970s. </p>
<p>These findings allow governments to better understand how they should form policies. For example, how should governments spend their money to improve happiness?</p>
<p>Across countries, an extra year of life (in terms of longevity) is equivalent to a 4.3% rise in GDP. A year of internal conflict is equivalent to a 30% drop in GDP. Policies that seek to enhance longevity, for example through providing better access to healthcare throughout life, may therefore be better than policies that only attempt to increase GDP, which is increasingly being challenged as a measure of progress. </p>
<p>The National Valence Index might also be used to understand how rising national debt and unemployment will influence our happiness in the future. A better understanding of what things positively and negatively effect society’s happiness could have measurable effects on both quality of life and a nation’s economic output. More generally, understanding our psychological past can help us to better envision a positive psychological future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125252/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Sgroi receives funding from the ESRC Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Growing Economy (CAGE), ESRC Grant Ref RES-626-28-0001.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eugenio Proto receives funding from CAGE/ ESRC </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chanuki Illushka Seresinhe and Thomas Hills do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Of the countries we looked at, all have seen an increase in subjective happiness since the 1970s.Thomas Hills, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of WarwickChanuki Illushka Seresinhe, Visiting researcher, Alan Turing InstituteDaniel Sgroi, Associate professor, University of WarwickEugenio Proto, Professor of Applied Economics and Econometrics, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/990422018-08-09T10:40:23Z2018-08-09T10:40:23ZWhy Silicon Valley needs theologians<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231291/original/file-20180809-30455-1q5zeav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leading_Theologians_of_the_Middle_Ages.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Religion and technology, at first glance, don’t go together. When I tell people that I research religion and robots, I’m often met with confusion. Interestingly, though, the religious figure of the <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/golem">golem</a>, a mound of earth or clay that has been brought to “life”, is widely recognised as a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43308245?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">precursor to the robot</a>. And some of the earliest examples of moving mechanical figures (automata) <a href="https://beta.sciencemuseum.org.uk/stories/2017/1/30/marvellous-machines-the-deep-roots-of-robots">were designed for religious purposes</a>, as a form of worship and reverence for God’s creative work. So are religion and robots really that far removed?</p>
<p>One way of thinking about this is in terms of how secularisation – the idea that religion loses influence in society – has generally (although <a href="https://religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/podcast-linda-woodhead-on-the-secularisation-thesis/">debatably</a>) come to characterise Western culture. This has broadly polarised religion and technology. Religion is often seen to concern irrational, spiritual ideas and technology rational, scientific principles.</p>
<p>But there is growing concern that pioneers of new technologies – the likes of Apple, Google, and Facebook, who all reside in Silicon Valley – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/business/computer-science-ethics-courses.html">have paid too much attention to the technical</a>.</p>
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<p>The loss of the spiritual has been critiqued by, among others, French sociologist, philosopher of technology, and lay theologian <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Technological-Society-Vintage-book-V-390/dp/0394703901/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532974582&sr=8-1&keywords=ellul+the+technological+society">Jacques Ellul</a>, for whom “mystery is a necessity of human life”. As Ellul goes on to say:</p>
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<p>Technique worships nothing, respects nothing. It has a single role: to strip off externals, to bring everything to light, and by rational use to transform everything into means.</p>
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<p>For Ellul, as for philosopher <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=heidegger+question+concerning+technology">Martin Heidegger</a>, technologies are too shallow to facilitate mystery. He argues that they rob us of this essential part of humanness.</p>
<h2>Technological humans</h2>
<p>These fears are widespread, and include visions of <a href="https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/">human obsolescence</a>, as well as of <a href="https://theconversation.com/super-intelligence-and-eternal-life-transhumanisms-faithful-follow-it-blindly-into-a-future-for-the-elite-78538">a loss of humaneness</a>. Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk even thinks that designing technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) is like “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/27/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-ai-biggest-existential-threat">summoning the demon</a>”. Religious language is often used to express our relationship to technology, and it is usually employed as a form of critique.</p>
<p>Musk also talks positively about technologies, unsurprisingly, which we see in his enthusiastic <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-silicon-valley-to-valles-marineris-is-humanity-ready-for-elon-musks-mars-vision-66244">proposals to build a human colony on Mars</a>. Technologies that are within our control and that enrich our human depth, it seems, are to be encouraged. This is in line with religious ideas about the sanctity and value of the human made in God’s image. In that Musk talks about a way to use technologies to ensure the ongoing survival of our species, it is possible to find <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/18/god-in-the-machine-my-strange-journey-into-transhumanism">religious support for his ideas</a>. </p>
<p>Explicitly religious attitudes and responses to technologies are also important to consider. For example, Skip Vaccarello, a technologist, has explored how some of his fellow technologists have <a href="https://findinggodinsiliconvalley.com/">found God in Silicon Valley</a>. This is in response to the perception that, in Silicon Valley (and elsewhere), “business, technology, and money are worshipped as idols”: inadequate stand-ins for God.</p>
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<p>At the heart of these religious ideas are reflections on depth and mystery. Significantly, these concerns don’t just extend to religious folk. When we ask about the possibility of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Sex-Robots-Human-robot-Relationships/dp/0715637770">loving machines</a>, for example, we are touching on ideas about the <a href="https://www.pechakucha.org/cities/manchester/presentations/should-we-love-robots">depth of human love</a> that may or may not exceed what can be programmed into machines. These sorts of concerns raise the question of how technologies suggest or compromise a sense of mystery and how we perceive it, which in turn affects how we interact with technologies. </p>
<p>Theologian <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=rudolf+otto+the+idea+of+the+holy&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Arudolf+otto+the+idea+of+the+holy">Rudolf Otto</a> refers to mystery when he describes how we as humans experience “the holy” as both “fascinans et tremendum” (awesomeness and awfulness). We seem to experience technologies in a similar way, with both promise and peril. Theological language, then, is an important resource for expressing – and understanding – how we think about technologies in terms of hope and doom.</p>
<h2>Silicon Valley</h2>
<p>Why, then, are we reluctant to connect theological reflection with technological development? </p>
<p>This ties in with a reluctance in Silicon Valley to address big themes and questions like what it is to be human and how a technological future might look beyond the realms of religion or sci-fi. Instead, <a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewYNg/status/1006204761543081984">there are calls</a> for practical insights into how users will respond to and appropriate new technologies, so that we can determine their benefits and shortcomings, as part of their potential to change lifestyles and social patterns. Grandiose hopes and fears, <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609048/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-ai-predictions/">it is claimed</a>, obscure our awareness of and attendance to the more urgent everyday ethical challenges prompted by technologies.</p>
<p>Facebook, for example, has recently come under fire over its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election">data privacy policy</a> and its impact on the <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/nicolenguyen/mark-zuckerberg-defended-the-right-of-holocaust-deniers-to">public sphere</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/google-and-facebook-wont-rule-the-world-if-we-dont-buy-their-fantasies-about-big-data-95734">global politics</a>, and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44868517">democracy</a>. Likewise, other questions have now been raised more generally about how technologies are perpetuating or even exacerbating <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-big-data-that-discriminates-its-the-people-that-use-it-55591">inequalities via algorithmic bias</a>, as well as about the effects of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artificial-intelligence-and-the-robotic-revolution-will-change-the-workplace-of-tomorrow-72607">automation on labour forces</a> and <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldai/100/100.pdf">lifestyle patterns</a>.</p>
<p>These are, of course, crucial questions. But as philosopher of technology <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Save-Everything-Click-Here-Technological/dp/1610393708">Evgeny Morozov</a> notes, the typical response is to develop <a href="https://www.economist.com/babbage/2013/05/02/the-folly-of-solutionism">new technological solutions</a>. And as anyone who’s ever studied or even owned a piece of technology is well aware, no fixes are by any means permanent or perfect.</p>
<p>It’s not just the ethical problems that are important to think about, then, but also the dominance of a techno-centred “solutionist” attitude, according to which we develop technologies with a view to fixing our problems. What this attitude suggests is a faith in both human and technological abilities to determine and fix problems. In Silicon Valley, this is expressed most explicitly by how <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/silicon-valley-star-says-tech-companies-dont-care-about-ethics/">the main question</a> is “can we do this?” rather than “should we do this?”. </p>
<p>Theology can respond to the second question. It can aid deeper reflection on what it is that we seek and value, and why. Theological discussions can help make sense of ideas about the mystery and sanctity of the human. Together with other philosophical explorations of technology, theology can contribute to the development of a reflective, rather than merely reactionary, ethics. In particular, it can help us to contemplate the myths we tell about ourselves and technologies as a way of evaluating the relationships between the two.</p>
<p>It’s not that Silicon Valley necessarily needs religious people. Rather, it’s that theologians are needed (as part of a wider crowd) to reflect on the tensions and relationship between the religious and the secular; to understand how this is important for how we think about rationality and spirituality; and thereby to cast additional light on what we value in a complex technological world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99042/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Midson is affiliated with the Lincoln Theological Institute. </span></em></p>We urgently need to contemplate the myths we tell about ourselves and technology as a way of evaluating the relationship between the two.Scott Midson, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Lincoln Theological Institute, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/946852018-04-16T14:43:40Z2018-04-16T14:43:40ZBefore Westworld was Mudfog – Charles Dickens’ surprisingly modern dystopia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214252/original/file-20180411-554-la3ony.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">George Cruikshank's impression of Dickens' dystopia.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.victorianweb.org/misc/pvabio.html">Philip V. Allingham of Victorian Web</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you’re a fan of the TV series, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/westworld">Westworld</a>, you’re probably aware that it’s based on Michael Crichton’s 1973 <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/westworld-movie-hbo">film of the same name</a>. What you may not know is that the concept has been kicking around for a very long time. While Crichton insists his dystopian vision had no “<a href="http://www.michaelcrichton.com/westworld/">literary antecedents</a>”, there’s at least one writer who may beg to differ. Charles Dickens imagined a robot theme park way back in 1838. Just like Westworld, the patrons of Dickens’ park are able to enact their “violent delights” on realistic humanoid androids.</p>
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<p>In the <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/912/912-h/912-h.htm">short story</a> titled: Full Report of the First Meeting of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything, a group of scientists meet to discuss a variety of proposals, including the classification of a one-eyed horse as “Fitfordogsmeataurious” and a snuffbox-sized machine for more efficient pickpocketing. The most vividly described of these outlandish ideas, though, is entrepreneurial inventor Mr Coppernose’s suggestion for a park filled with “automaton figures” which would enable wealthy young men to run riot without causing a public nuisance. Sound familiar? So, how do the two parks measure up?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215035/original/file-20180416-127631-cq5o5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215035/original/file-20180416-127631-cq5o5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215035/original/file-20180416-127631-cq5o5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215035/original/file-20180416-127631-cq5o5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215035/original/file-20180416-127631-cq5o5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215035/original/file-20180416-127631-cq5o5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215035/original/file-20180416-127631-cq5o5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215035/original/file-20180416-127631-cq5o5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Dickens’ dystopia is in a book of short stories.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In purely physical terms, Dickens’ park is much smaller. The series’ showrunner, Jonathan Nolan, has indicated that Westworld <a href="http://ew.com/article/2016/11/13/westworld-interview-bernard-clementine/">covers around 500 square miles</a>, while Coppernose suggests a more modest “space of ground of not less than ten miles in length” for his park. But both demonstrate a similar attention to detail when it comes to creating a realistic environment for their patrons to explore. Westworld offers trading outposts, farmsteads and wide open plains populated by robot cowboys, saloon girls and the Ghost Nation Tribe. Coppernose’s park strives to recreate a version of semi-rural England using “highway roads, turnpikes, bridges [and] miniature villages”, inhabited by automaton police officers, cab drivers and elderly women.</p>
<p>Delos Incorporated (the company which owns Westworld) expects its players will use these environments and android “hosts” to engage in both whitehat (heroic) and blackhat (villainous) activities. Meanwhile, Coppernose assumes only the most base and destructive behaviour from his park patrons. This is evidenced in various design choices, such as the “gas lamps of real glass, which could be broken at a comparatively small expense per dozen”, and the vocal abilities of the automatons themselves which, when struck, “utter divers groans, mingled with entreaties for mercy, thus rendering the illusion complete and the enjoyment perfect”.</p>
<p>Yet this advanced speech technology isn’t the only thing Coppernose’s automatons have in common with Westworld’s hosts, as demonstrated in <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/cruikshank/24.jpg">George Cruikshank’s illustration</a>. Here the lifelike robots are shown to be operational despite missing limbs – something we’ve seen during diagnostic sessions with Westworld’s damaged hosts in the repair lab. </p>
<p>While Coppernose doesn’t provide specific details of any maintenance crews, it seems he has a similar rotational system in mind when he suggests a stock of 140 automatons, with around half kept in reserve so that broken units can be exchanged. However, rather than the spooky warehouse filled with dormant hosts seen in Westworld, Coppernose has a far more space-saving storage solution, keeping inert robot police officers on shelves until needed.</p>
<h2>Only human after all</h2>
<p>Although its never been explicitly explained in the show, showrunner Lisa Joy has described the “<a href="http://www.ew.com/article/2016/10/09/westworld-showrunners-second-episode/">good samaritan reflex</a>” as a safety measure programmed into all Westworld’s hosts – including the animals. This ensures that if a guest is at risk of endangering themselves or another guest, a host will step in to save them from harm. Humans don’t fare so well in Dickens’ park – Coppernose advocates the use of “live pedestrians … procured from the workhouse” for the wealthy park guests to run down in their cabriolets.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215046/original/file-20180416-47416-1ozuops.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215046/original/file-20180416-47416-1ozuops.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215046/original/file-20180416-47416-1ozuops.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215046/original/file-20180416-47416-1ozuops.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215046/original/file-20180416-47416-1ozuops.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215046/original/file-20180416-47416-1ozuops.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215046/original/file-20180416-47416-1ozuops.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Natural born killer: Westworld’s Man in Black.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HBO</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>However, this is where a theme only lightly touched on in Westworld is brought to the fore in Dickens’ text: the disparity between justice for the rich and the poor. Coppernose’s affluent young adventurers must attend a mock trial following their wild and destructive behaviour, where wooden-headed automaton magistrates side with the defendants rather than the robot police attempting to prosecute them. Dickens describes this process as “quite equal to life” serving to underline the inequality at play in the justice system. </p>
<p>While Westworld primarily focuses on <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-watching-westworlds-robots-should-make-us-question-ourselves-66434">what it means to be human</a> it does hint at this same idea: that we’re inclined to overlook the bad behaviour of the rich and powerful. When wealthy park patron “<a href="http://westworld.wikia.com/wiki/Man_in_Black">Man in Black</a>” kills hosts indiscriminately, security chief Ashley Williams says: “That gentleman gets whatever he wants.” </p>
<p>Of course, now that Westworld’s robots have gone rogue, the Man in Black may not go unpunished in season two. Perhaps the retribution Dickens would doubtless have liked to have seen will be delivered not by the courts, but the robots themselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94685/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynda Clark receives funding from the AHRC and M3C Doctoral Training Partnership. </span></em></p>Charles Dickens imagined a robot theme park way back in 1838.Lynda Clark, PhD Researcher in Creative and Critical Writing, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/934162018-03-15T19:22:22Z2018-03-15T19:22:22ZStephen Hawking warned about the perils of artificial intelligence – yet AI gave him a voice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210627/original/file-20180315-104671-141tng2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stephen Hawking both warned about and benefited from artificial intelligence.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/PGroup-Hoo-Me-com-MediaPunch-MediaPunch-IPx-A-/e1bf381e99504336a034af9d16712f6d/44/0">Hoo-Me.com/MediaPunch/IPX/AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-timeline-of-stephen-hawkings-remarkable-life-93364">late Stephen Hawking</a> was a major voice in the debate about how humanity can benefit from artificial intelligence. Hawking made <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-barrat/hawking-gates-artificial-intelligence_b_7008706.html">no secret of his fears</a> that thinking machines could one day take charge. He went as far as predicting that future developments in AI “<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540">could spell the end of the human race</a>.”</p>
<p>But Hawking’s relationship with AI was far more complex than this often-cited soundbite. The deep concerns he expressed were about superhuman AI, the point at which AI systems not only replicate human intelligence processes, but also keep expanding them, without our support – a stage that is at best decades away, <a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/04/the-myth-of-a-superhuman-ai/">if it ever happens at all</a>. And yet Hawking’s very ability to communicate those fears, and all his other ideas, came to depend on basic AI technology.</p>
<h2>Hawking’s conflicted relationship with AI</h2>
<p>At the <a href="https://law.depaul.edu/about/centers-and-institutes/center-for-intellectual-property-law-and-information-technology/Pages/default.aspx">intellectual property</a> and <a href="https://law.depaul.edu/about/centers-and-institutes/health-law-institute/Pages/default.aspx">health law</a> centers at DePaul University, my colleagues and I study the effects of emerging technologies like the ones Stephen Hawking worried about. At its core, the concept of AI involves computational technology designed to make machines <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/0521122937">function with foresight</a> that mimics, and <a href="https://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/viewFile/1904/1802">ultimately surpasses</a>, human thinking processes.</p>
<p>Hawking cautioned against an extreme form of AI, in which thinking machines would “<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540">take off</a>” on their own, modifying themselves and independently designing and building ever more capable systems. Humans, bound by the slow pace of biological evolution, would be tragically outwitted.</p>
<h2>AI as a threat to humanity?</h2>
<p>Well before it gets to the point of superhuman technology, AI can be put to terrible uses. Already, scholars and commentators worry that <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-05-10/case-against-killer-robots">self-flying drones may be precursors</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/losing-control-the-dangers-of-killer-robots-58262">lethal autonomous robots</a>. </p>
<p>Today’s early stage AI raises several other ethical and practical problems, too. AI systems are largely based on <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604087/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/">opaque algorithms</a> that make decisions even their own designers may be <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-know-the-algorithms-the-government-uses-to-make-important-decisions-about-us-57869">unable to explain</a>. The underlying mathematical models <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608248/biased-algorithms-are-everywhere-and-no-one-seems-to-care/">can be biased</a>, and <a href="https://ai100.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/ai_100_report_0831fnl.pdf">computational errors</a> may occur. AI may progressively displace human skills and <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/top-10-ethical-issues-in-artificial-intelligence/">increase unemployment</a>. And limited access to AI might <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/opinion/sunday/artificial-intelligence-economic-inequality.html">increase global inequality</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://ai100.stanford.edu/about">One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence</a>, launched by Stanford University in 2014, highlighted some of these concerns. But so far it has identified no evidence that AI will pose any “<a href="https://ai100.stanford.edu/2016-report/executive-summary">imminent threat</a>” to humankind, as Hawking feared.</p>
<p>Still, Hawking’s views on AI are somewhat less alarmist and more nuanced than he usually gets credit for. At their heart, they describe the need to understand and regulate emerging technologies. He <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-transcendence-looks-at-the-implications-of-artificial-intelligence-but-are-we-taking-9313474.html">repeatedly called</a> for <a href="https://futureoflife.org/ai-open-letter">more research</a> on the benefits and dangers of AI. And he <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/stephen-hawking-artificial-intelligence-diaster-human-history-leverhulme-centre-cambridge-a7371106.html">believed</a> that even non-superhuman AI systems could help eradicate war, poverty and disease.</p>
<h2>Hawking talks</h2>
<p>This apparent contradiction – a fear of humanity being eventually overtaken by AI but optimism about its benefits in the meantime – may have come from his own life: Hawking had <a href="https://theconversation.com/stephen-hawking-as-accidental-ambassador-for-assistive-technologies-70627">come to rely on AI</a> to interact with the world.</p>
<p>Unable to speak since 1985, he used a series of different <a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/01/intel-gave-stephen-hawking-voice/">communication systems</a> that helped him talk and write, culminating in the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-07-30/the-machine-behind-stephen-hawking-s-voice">now-legendary computer</a> operated by <a href="http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-computer.html">one muscle</a> in his right cheek.</p>
<p>The first iteration of the computer program was exasperatingly slow and prone to errors. <a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/08/stephen-hawking-software-open-source/">Very basic AI changed that</a>. An <a href="https://opensource.com/business/15/8/open-source-intel-speech-system">open-source</a> program made his word selection significantly faster. More importantly, it used artificial intelligence to analyze Hawking’s own words, and then used that information to help him express new ideas. By processing Hawking’s books, articles and lecture scripts, the system got so good that he did not even have to type the term people most associate with him, “<a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/01/intel-gave-stephen-hawking-voice/">the black hole</a>.” When he selected “the,” “black” would automatically be suggested to follow it, and “black” would prompt “hole” onto the screen.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Stephen Hawking discusses a predictive system that helped him communicate.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>AI improves people’s health</h2>
<p>Stephen Hawking’s experience with such a basic form of AI illustrates how non-superhuman AI can indeed change people’s lives for the better. Speech prediction helped him cope with a devastating <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stephen-hawking-als/">neurological disease</a>. Other AI-based systems are already helping prevent, fight and lessen the burden of disease.</p>
<p>For instance, AI can analyze medical sensors and other health data to predict how likely a patient is to <a href="http://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aab3719">develop a severe blood infection</a>. In studies it was <a href="http://releases.jhu.edu/2015/08/05/computer-algorithm-can-forecast-patients-deadly-sepsis/">substantially more accurate</a> – and provided much more advance warning – than other methods. </p>
<p>Another group of researchers created an AI program to sift through electronic health records of 700,000 patients. The program, called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/srep26094">Deep Patient</a>,” unearthed linkages that had not been apparent to doctors, identifying new risk patterns for certain cancers, diabetes and psychiatric disorders.</p>
<p>AI has even powered a robotic surgery system that <a href="http://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aad9398">outperformed human surgeons</a> in a procedure on pigs that’s very similar to one type of operation on human patients.</p>
<p>There’s so much promise for AI to improve people’s health that collecting medical data has become a cornerstone of both software development and public-health policy in the U.S. For example, the Obama White House <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/node/333101">launched a research effort</a> seeking to <a href="https://allofus.nih.gov">collect DNA from at least a million Americans</a>. The data will be made available for AI systems to analyze when studying <a href="http://theconversation.com/four-ways-precision-medicine-is-making-a-difference-90459">new medical treatments</a>, potentially improving both diagnoses and patients’ recovery.</p>
<p>All of these benefits from AI are available right now, and more are in the works. They do suggest that superhuman AI systems could be extremely powerful, but despite warnings from Hawking and fellow technology visionary <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/elon-musk-at-sxsw-a-i-is-more-dangerous-than-nuclear-weapons.html">Elon Musk</a> that day may never come. In the meantime, as Hawking knew, there is <a href="https://futureoflife.org/data/documents/research_priorities.pdf?x89399">much to be gained</a>. AI gave him a better and more efficient voice than his body was able to provide, with which he called for both research and restraint.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ana Santos Rutschman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite his fears artificial intelligence might one day overtake humanity, Stephen Hawking knew from his own life how profoundly AI could improve humans’ daily lives.Ana Santos Rutschman, Jaharis Faculty Fellow in Health Law and Intellectual Property, DePaul UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/806992017-07-17T09:02:20Z2017-07-17T09:02:20ZHumanity’s ‘sustainability’ is no excuse for abandoning planet Earth<p>“Spreading out into space will completely change the future of humanity,” says Stephen Hawking. It “may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth”.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.hawking.org.uk/about-stephen.html">world-famous physicist</a> was talking at a recent science festival in Trondheim, Norway. And his keynote speech to the Starmus Festival about giving <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40345048">humanity a sense of purpose</a> raises some very important questions about our views of positive futures.</p>
<p>For Hawking “a new and ambitious space programme would excite (young people), and stimulate interest in other areas, such as astrophysics and cosmology”. Humans have to leave Earth, he <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/06/20/human-race-doomed-do-not-colonise-moon-mars-says-stephen-hawking/">explained</a>, due to an array of threats including asteroid strikes, resource depletion, overpopulation, deforestation, decimation of animal species, and the effects of human made climate change (particularly rising temperatures and melting ice caps).</p>
<p>Yet hearing such a viewpoint in response to the challenges we face leaves me cold. We cannot flee the apocalypse forever, leaving a chosen few to flourish on other planets; we need positive visions for humanity here on Earth.</p>
<p>I am not a physicist, I <a href="http://beta.www.hull.ac.uk/Faculties/fblp/hubs.aspx">research and teach in a business school</a> about how people and organisations go about taking action to address sustainability challenges, such as the global ecological threats mentioned by Hawking. </p>
<p>The concept of sustainability has been <a href="https://www.greenbooks.co.uk/sustainability">traced back</a> to ideas that emerged in forestry about 300 years ago to sustain yields. The general implication of this expansive and slippery concept is that we need to work out ways to sustain both the social (including economic) and ecological processes that enable us to live in ways that we value. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178397/original/file-20170717-6064-lwwzl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178397/original/file-20170717-6064-lwwzl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178397/original/file-20170717-6064-lwwzl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178397/original/file-20170717-6064-lwwzl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178397/original/file-20170717-6064-lwwzl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178397/original/file-20170717-6064-lwwzl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178397/original/file-20170717-6064-lwwzl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Time to go?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/planet-explosion-earth-science-fiction-art-559638658">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Key <a href="http://www.culturechange.org/issue19/unsustainability.htm">questions</a> are raised by Hawking’s speech and we can use these questions to briefly explore Hawking’s ideas about a future for humanity:</p>
<p><strong>What is being sustained?</strong></p>
<p>Hawking’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/06/20/human-race-doomed-do-not-colonise-moon-mars-says-stephen-hawking/">suggestion</a> is that by establishing colonies on the moon or Mars we are helping to guarantee that some form of human life will continue beyond Earth being humanly habitable. What is being sustained is a protected bubble of a small selection of humans in artificially created Earth-styled environments somewhere in space.</p>
<p><strong>How long is it being sustained?</strong></p>
<p>Given his background in research into how the universe began – and will end – it is perhaps no surprise that in Hawking’s vision for humanity the time horizons are very long. His intention is for <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40345048">another million years of human life</a>, with our space colonies enabling us to live even beyond the life of Earth itself.</p>
<p><strong>In whose interest is what being sustained?</strong></p>
<p>We can identify a range of core interests who would benefit from Hawking’s idea of humanity spreading out into space, including astrophysicists, astronauts, space agencies (science-related areas of work) <a href="https://theconversation.com/alarming-gender-gap-in-school-science-sets-women-up-to-fail-38344?sg=4159c6d2-05de-4141-9a79-fb8da9673fd7&sp=1&sr=9">which tend to be much more appealing to men</a> and the members of the future space colonies.</p>
<h2>But what about everyone not on the Ark?</h2>
<p>The problem is that such a purpose or vision for humanity involves, and is relevant for, very limited groups of people. They will generally do certain types of jobs, and will be citizens of, or live in, those few countries that are putting serious money into space exploration. It’s easy enough to imagine a colony on Mars with the same sort of demographic makeup as a Silicon Valley tech giant. It’s much harder to imagine a colony populated by people with little financial wealth from less wealthy countries – the very people most affected by the environmental threats Hawking refers to.</p>
<p>I don’t have any particular objections to space travel itself. Interplanetary tourism <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-space-tourism-travelling-faster-than-space-law-43586?sa=pg1&sq=space+travel&sr=3">doesn’t come cheap</a> of course, and isn’t great for the carbon footprint, but if people want to leave planet Earth they are welcome to do so. My concern is that such visions are being presented as a benefit for all of human society.</p>
<h2>Fostering ambivalence</h2>
<p>After Hawking’s speech to the Starmus Festival, audience members put it to him that it would be better to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40345048">spend our money on solving the problems of this planet</a>. Hawking’s view is also one that is likely very enticing for a few, but alienating for many. This is partly because of the hopelessness of the <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html">apocalyptic vision for planet Earth</a>, which is his starting point. This gloomy scenario can <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/143788/power-peril-climate-disaster-porn">foster ambivalence</a> by belittling what we can each do in the face of such enormous problems.</p>
<p>Hawking also puts too much emphasis on technology. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-cant-simply-bet-on-renewable-energy-to-stop-global-warming-68202">problem</a> with sustainability visions that rely on tech advancements is they rarely factor in the complex task of sustaining conducive social-ecological relations. Yes, humans may eventually invent nuclear fusion, or a great way to suck carbon out of the atmosphere. But we’ll invent harmful things too, providing even more ways to trash the planet. Which sets of technologies are more significant will be a question of politics, not science.</p>
<p>It can be very difficult to face up to the <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/specials/planetaryboundaries/index.html">social and ecological challenges</a> that scientists have outlined and still develop some enthusiasm for positive “approach goals” instead of negative “avoidance goals”. New technologies are part of the positive picture, but too much tech talk is a distraction. </p>
<p>As we each develop our own view about what a positive future would look like, it’s clear that the real innovation must be in <a href="https://theconversation.com/popes-climate-letter-is-a-radical-attack-on-the-logic-of-the-market-43437">the ways we organise ourselves and live together</a> on Earth – as there’s not much hope in only aiming for a life on Mars.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Allen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We need a positive vision for humanity, not tech-driven life on Mars.Stephen Allen, Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour and HRM, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/792712017-06-12T19:56:46Z2017-06-12T19:56:46ZHow to backup life on Earth ahead of any doomsday event<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173315/original/file-20170612-307-14yxqwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's happened before: why we need to plan for the next doomsday event that could wipe out much of life on Earth.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/solarseven</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are ten asteroids that the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-s-asteroid-hunting-spacecraft-a-discovery-machine">space organisation NASA said this month</a> have been classified as “potentially hazardous” based on their size and their orbits in our Solar system.</p>
<p>NASA has now identified 693 near-Earth objects thanks to the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft that’s been <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/neowise/main/index.html">looking for potential threats to Earth</a> since 2013.</p>
<p>The organisation doesn’t specify what kind of hazard these ten asteroids pose. But Earth has been hit by objects in the past, with devastating effects. Scientists largely agree that it was an <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39922998">asteroid or comet impact</a> that started the chain of events that wiped out the dinosaurs around 60 million years ago.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uGKY-XzFeNU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">This animation shows asteroids and comets observed by the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Every year several previously unseen asteroids whizz past Earth, sometimes with only with a few days’ warning. This year two of these asteroids came very close to Earth, with one in May <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/95480/newly-found-asteroid-buzzes-earth/">sailing past only 15,000km away</a>. On cosmic scales, that was a very close shave.</p>
<p>But impacts from objects in space are just one of <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/here-s-how-world-could-end-and-what-we-can-do-about-it">several ways</a> that humanity and most of life on Earth could suddenly disappear.</p>
<p>We are already observing that extinctions are happening now at an unprecedented rate. In 2014 it was estimated that <a href="https://news.brown.edu/articles/2014/09/extinctions">the extinction rate is now 1,000 times greater</a> than before humans were on the Earth. The estimated number of <a href="http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/">extinctions ranges from 200 to 2,000 species per year</a>.</p>
<p>From all of this very worrying data, it would not be a stretch to say that we are currently within a doomsday scenario. Of course, the “day” is longer than 24 hours but may be instead in the order of <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/06/18/a-child-born-today-may-live-to-see-humanitys-end-unless/">a century or two</a>.</p>
<p>So what can we do about this potential prospect of impending doom? We can try to avoid some of the likely scenarios. We <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming#two-brick-multi-row-section-6">should act to tackle climate change</a> and we can develop new asteroid-tracking systems and put in place a <a href="https://www.seeker.com/top-10-ways-to-stop-an-asteroid-1766426958.html">means to deflect an asteroid</a> on a collision course with Earth.</p>
<p>But the threats we face are so unpredictable that we need to have a backup plan. We need to plan for the time after our doomsday and think about how a post-apocalyptic Earth may recover and humanity will flourish again.</p>
<h2>A backup plan</h2>
<p>Some efforts to backup life on our planet have already started. Since the 1970s scientists around the world began to store seeds of potentially endangered plants. There are <a href="http://www.agprofessional.com/news/Update-on-the-worlds-15-largest-seed-banks-217990631.html">now dozens of seed banks</a> or vaults scattered around the world.</p>
<p>The most famous is the <a href="http://www.seedvault.no/">Svalbard Global Seed Vault</a>, located on a remote Norwegian island about 1,300km from the North Pole. The location was deliberately chosen to afford the project safe and secure long-term storage in cold and dry rock vaults.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173317/original/file-20170612-21746-ovojpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173317/original/file-20170612-21746-ovojpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173317/original/file-20170612-21746-ovojpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173317/original/file-20170612-21746-ovojpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173317/original/file-20170612-21746-ovojpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173317/original/file-20170612-21746-ovojpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173317/original/file-20170612-21746-ovojpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173317/original/file-20170612-21746-ovojpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A risk of thawing at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/landbruks-_og_matdepartementet/4186766565/">Flickr/Landbruks og matdepartementet</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts">reports earlier this year</a> that the vault had suffered issues with water from the surrounding melting permafrost (caused by global warming) gaining entry to parts of the structure.</p>
<p>Less common are vaults for storing biological material from animals. There are a handful of so-called <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/san-diegos-frozen-zoo/">frozen zoos</a> around the world. They store embryos, eggs, sperm and more <a href="https://frozenark.org/">recently DNA</a> of endangered animals. So far, sperm, eggs and embryos that have been frozen for roughly 20 years have been shown to be viable.</p>
<p>All of the storage methods that involve freezing have the same problem that the material is at risk of thawing out if the freezing methods fail. Storing frozen biological material for centuries or even millennia on Earth is not realistic.</p>
<p>Humans can now sequence a whole genome of a living organism and the cost has reduced to the point where it <a href="https://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/">costs less than US$1,000 to sequence the human genome</a>. This process effectively turns the information from any organism’s cells into data.</p>
<p>If future scientists can <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/02/synthetic-dna-scientist-says-it-could-be-inside-humans-within-5-years.html">create living DNA from the genome data</a> and can then <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/23/organisms-created-with-synthetic-dna-pave-way-for-new-entirely-new-life-forms">create living organisms from that DNA</a>, then having the data alone may be sufficient to backup the Earth’s living organisms.</p>
<h2>Where to store the backups?</h2>
<p>But where should humanity store the backups? As French president Emmanuel Macron <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-macron-idUSKBN18S6M2">said recently</a>, “there is no plan B because there is no planet B”, <a href="http://www.un.org/climatechange/summit/2014/09/plan-b-climate-action-planet-b-says-un-chief/">echoing 2014 comments</a> from Ban Ki-moon when he was secretary general of the United Nations.</p>
<p>Backing up on Earth seems a high-risk strategy, equivalent to having a computer backup on an external hard drive that sits right next to your computer.</p>
<p>So given that the motivation for backing up Earth’s organisms is the likelihood of Earth itself suffering a catastrophe, it follows that our planet is not the best location for the backups. The partial flooding of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault illustrates that perfectly.</p>
<p>Perhaps the obvious place to locate the backups is in space.</p>
<p>Seeds <a href="http://www.farmweekly.com.au/news/agriculture/agribusiness/general-news/seed-bank-for-outer-space/1554366.aspx">have already been taken to space</a> for short periods (six months) to test their viability back on Earth. These experiments so far have been motivated by the desire to eventually grow plants in space itself, on space stations, or on Mars.</p>
<p>Space is a harsh environment for biological material, where cells are exposed to potentially very high doses of radiation that will damage DNA. Storage of seeds in low Earth orbit is desirable as Earth’s magnetic field <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/27005/earths-magnetic-field/">provides some protection</a> from space radiation. Storage outside of this zone and in deep space would require other methods of radiation protection.</p>
<p>The other question is how you would get seeds and other biological material safely back to Earth after a global disaster. Now we get to the robotics that can help, as autonomous re-entry of biological material from orbit is totally feasible.</p>
<p>The tricky part is for our orbiting bio-backup to know when its cargo is required and where to send it to. Perhaps we need a global limited robot crew – such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0301533/?ref_=tt_cl_t2">David</a> in the recent Alien films – that would wake up the orbiter when it is needed.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qgJs7uluwlU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Hello, I’m David.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alternatively, it could be staffed by a rotating crew of wardens similar to the International Space Station. These people could carry out other important scientific work too.</p>
<p>Other locations in space for storage of biological material or data include <a href="http://www.moondaily.com/reports/Seed_Bank_For_The_Moon_999.html">the Moon</a>, and the moons of our solar system’s gas planets asteroids or <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/691407/Human-DNA-SPACE-back-up-species-extinct">deep space itself on free flying spacecraft</a>. Such projects have been proposed and groups around the world have begun planning such ventures.</p>
<p>So it seems that some people have already accepted the fate of humanity version 1.0 and that it will end sometime in the relative near term. The movement to create our backup ready for humanity version 2.0 has already begun.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79271/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Roberts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>NASA says there are ten “potentially hazardous” asteroids close to Earth. Good reason to make sure we have a backup plan should any catastrophic event wipe of much of life on Earth.Jonathan Roberts, Professor in Robotics, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/743782017-03-10T14:54:27Z2017-03-10T14:54:27ZDo Brexit and Trump show that we’re living in a computer simulation?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160328/original/image-20170310-3700-hr4fqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent political events have turned the world upside down. The UK voting for Brexit and the US electing Donald Trump as president were unthinkable 18 months ago. In fact, they’re so extraordinary that <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/neil-degrasse-tyson-intelligent-alien-life">some have questioned</a> whether they might not be an indication that we’re actually living in some kind of computer simulation or alien experiment.</p>
<p>These unexpected events could be experiments to see how our political systems cope under stress. Or they could be cruel jokes made at our expense by our alien zookeepers. Or maybe they’re just glitches in the system that were never meant to happen. Perhaps the <a href="https://theconversation.com/oscars-fiasco-a-once-in-a-lifetime-foul-up-you-wouldnt-bet-on-it-73778">recent mix-up at the Oscars</a> or the unlikely victories of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-six-steps-to-team-spirit-that-helped-leicester-win-the-league-58840">Leicester City</a> in the English Premier League or the New England Patriots in the Superbowl <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/did-the-oscars-just-prove-that-we-are-living-in-a-computer-simulation">are similar glitches</a>.</p>
<p>The problem with using these difficult political events as evidence that our world is a simulation is how unethical such a scenario would be. If there really were a robot or alien power that was intelligent enough to control all our lives in this way, there’s a good chance they’d have developed the moral sense not to do so.</p>
<p>Philosophers have been discussing the prospect that the world is just an illusion for <a href="http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dcarg.htm">hundreds of years</a>. It most recently returned to public attention when SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk suggested we are probably <a href="https://theconversation.com/elon-musk-says-were-probably-living-in-a-computer-simulation-heres-the-science-60821">living in a computer simulation</a>, a real-life version of The Matrix. </p>
<p>Echoing <a href="http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html">philosopher Nick Bostrom</a>, Musk reasoned that computing power is growing so quickly that our descendants would find it easy to run as many universe simulations as they like. This would lead to an unlimited number of simulated universes, but there would still only be one real universe. The odds of ours being the real one would be infinitesimal. </p>
<p>Bostrom concludes one of three things must be true. Either humanity goes extinct before developing the technology to make universe simulations possible. Or advanced civilisations freely choose not to run such simulations. Or we are probably living in a simulation. Bostrom and Musk put their money on this last option.</p>
<p>The question we’re faced with is whether unexpected events such as Trump and Brexit make it more or less likely that we are living in a simulation. Are they the kind of thing we should expect to see in a simulated universe?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160329/original/image-20170310-2293-q3we1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160329/original/image-20170310-2293-q3we1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160329/original/image-20170310-2293-q3we1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160329/original/image-20170310-2293-q3we1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160329/original/image-20170310-2293-q3we1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160329/original/image-20170310-2293-q3we1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160329/original/image-20170310-2293-q3we1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are we living in a virtual world?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Political scientists usually can’t run experiments in the real world to test their theories like other scientists can. But what if they could run a giant computer simulation to get the data? Brexit and Trump might be deliberate experiments designed to see what happens when key features of our world are put under strain. Is the American constitution self-supporting, even when officials are malevolent or incompetent? Can Britain thrive outside the EU? Can democracy survive without protection from NATO? </p>
<p>But experiments in global politics in the real world wouldn’t just be prohibitively difficult and expensive. <a href="http://www.ethicsguidebook.ac.uk/">They would also be unethical.</a> It’s wrong to make research subjects suffer without their informed consent. Knowledge may be valuable, but it is not valuable enough to justify cruelty in its pursuit.</p>
<p>Increasingly, we’re coming to realise that these ethical limitations apply not only to our fellow humans, but to all beings capable of suffering – including both animals and sentient artificial intelligence. <a href="http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/artificial-intelligence.pdf">Bostrom has argued</a> that as long as a consciousness is capable of subjective experience, pain and fear are experienced the same way, regardless of whether they are manifested in neurons or circuits. </p>
<p>We might not have sentient AI yet, but the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-robotics-lawmaking-idUSKCN0Z72AY">EU is already drafting proposals</a> for the protection of “electronic persons.” And, just as it would be wrong for us to conduct cruel experiments on sentient AI, so too would it be wrong for our digital overlords to conduct them on us. This is good reason to think that advanced civilisations would choose not to simulate our world, even if they had the technical capacity to do so, because doing so would be morally wrong.</p>
<h2>Moral monstrosity</h2>
<p>Bostrom argues that it’s not clear that creating a universe like ours would be wrong, despite the suffering that exists. He also points out that our possible digital overlords, like the gods of traditional religions, could reward us with a blissful (simulated) afterlife. This is a traditional theological response to what is known as <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/">the problem of evil</a>. But it still leaves the question of whether it is ethical to make us suffer first and only provide compensation later.</p>
<p>This argument also won’t save the suggestion that recent events make a simulation more likely – quite the opposite. The worse the world gets, the less likely it is that it’s morally acceptable to have created it. </p>
<p>Of course, even if simulating our world is wrong, our digital masters might do it anyway. Not all technically advanced civilisations are moral. The Nazis were famously adept technologically. It’s not crazy to think that a German victory in World War II, while a moral monstrosity, would not have been a disaster for science. </p>
<p>But there’s a reason why the world depicted in Philip K Dick’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/nov/20/the-man-in-the-high-castle">The Man in the High Castle</a>, which portrays just such a situation, is threatened by imminent nuclear destruction. Without ethics to limit its use, science and technology are grave dangers to human survival. </p>
<p>Which makes it much more likely that a universe simulation would never be created. Either our descendants will be ethical enough not to destroy one another and so ethical enough not to simulate suffering like ours, or humanity will go extinct before it is able to. </p>
<p>As W H Auden said, “we must love one another or die”. And we would never put creatures we love into a simulated world filled with malaria, famine, civil war … and Donald Trump.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74378/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael L. Frazer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Surely no super intelligence would be that cruel.Michael L. Frazer, Lecturer in Political and Social Theory, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/470342015-10-11T19:27:51Z2015-10-11T19:27:51ZMany fear the worst for humanity, so how do we avoid surrendering to an apocalyptic fate?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94341/original/image-20150910-4697-1lns391.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People in the West seem to have a bleak vision of the prospects for our way of life and even for the survival of humanity.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-143158582/stock-photo-background-desert-town-after-the-nuclear-apocalypse.html?src=RbdGmwRKO-bU6VoUGBZpdQ-1-61">YorkBerlin/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new, four-nation study has found people rate the risks of global threats to humanity surprisingly high. These perceptions are likely to be important, socially and politically, in shaping how humanity responds to the threats.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328715000828">study</a>, of more than 2000 people in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, found: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>54% of people surveyed rated the risk of our way of life ending within the next 100 years at 50% or greater;</p></li>
<li><p>almost one in four (24%) rated the risk of humans being wiped out within a century at 50% or greater;</p></li>
<li><p>almost three in four (73%) believe there is a 30% or greater risk of our way of life ending (30% said that the risk is 70% or more); and</p></li>
<li><p>almost four in ten (39%) believe there is a 30% or greater danger of humanity being wiped out (10% said the risk is 70% or more). </p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98150/original/image-20151012-17839-1jusqtr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98150/original/image-20151012-17839-1jusqtr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98150/original/image-20151012-17839-1jusqtr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98150/original/image-20151012-17839-1jusqtr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98150/original/image-20151012-17839-1jusqtr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98150/original/image-20151012-17839-1jusqtr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98150/original/image-20151012-17839-1jusqtr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98150/original/image-20151012-17839-1jusqtr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Percentage support for belief that our existing way of life or humanity has a 50% or more chance of ending in a century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://infogr.am/futures_study-974">Authors/University of Wollongong</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The study also asked people about different responses to the threats. These responses were categorised as nihilism (the loss of belief in a social or moral order; decadence rules), fundamentalism (the retreat to certain belief; dogma rules), or activism (the transformation of belief; hope rules). It found:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>a large majority (78%) agreed “we need to transform our worldview and way of life if we are to create a better future for the world” (activism);</p></li>
<li><p>about one in two (48%) agreed that “the world’s future looks grim so we have to focus on looking after ourselves and those we love” (nihilism); and</p></li>
<li><p>more than one in three (36%) said “we are facing a final conflict between good and evil in the world” (fundamentalism).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Findings were similar across countries, age, sex and other demographic groups, although some interesting differences emerged. For example, more Americans (30%) believed the risk of humans being wiped out was high and that humanity faces a final conflict between good and evil (47%). This presumably reflects the strength in the US of Christian fundamentalism and its belief in the “end time”, a coming Apocalypse.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98151/original/image-20151012-17843-qaxore.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98151/original/image-20151012-17843-qaxore.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98151/original/image-20151012-17843-qaxore.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98151/original/image-20151012-17843-qaxore.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98151/original/image-20151012-17843-qaxore.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98151/original/image-20151012-17843-qaxore.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98151/original/image-20151012-17843-qaxore.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98151/original/image-20151012-17843-qaxore.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Percentage support for belief that our existing way of life or humanity has a 50% or more chance of ending in a century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://infogr.am/futures_study-974">Authors/University of Wollongong</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A world of threats coming to a head</h2>
<p>There is mounting scientific evidence and concern that humanity faces a defining moment in history – a time when it must address growing adversities or suffer grave consequences. Reputable journals are canvassing the possibilities; the new study will be published in a special issue of Futures on <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328715001135">“Confronting catastrophic threats to humanity”</a>.</p>
<p>Most focus today is on climate change and its many, potentially catastrophic, impacts. Other threats include depletion and degradation of natural resources and ecosystems; continuing world population growth; disease pandemics; global economic collapse; nuclear and biological war and terrorism; and runaway technological change.</p>
<p>Many of these threats are not new. Scientists and other experts have warned of the dangers for decades. Nevertheless, the evidence is growing stronger, especially about climate change, and never before have actual events, including natural disasters and calamities, and their sustained and graphic media coverage so powerfully reinforced the possible impacts. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, then, surveys reveal widespread public pessimism about the future of the world, at least in Western countries. This includes a common perception of declining quality of life, or that future generations will be worse off. </p>
<p>However, there appears to have been little research into people’s perceptions of how dire humanity’s predicament is, including the risk of collapse of civilisation or human extinction. These perceptions have a significant bearing on how societies, and humanity as a whole, deal with potentially catastrophic futures.</p>
<h2>How does loss of faith in the future affect us?</h2>
<p>People’s responses in our study do not necessarily represent considered assessments of the specific risks. Rather, they are likely to be an expression of a more general uncertainty and fear, a loss of faith in a future constructed around notions of material progress, economic growth and scientific and technological fixes to the challenges we face. </p>
<p>This loss of faith is important, yet hardly registers in current debate and discussion. We have yet to understand its full implications.</p>
<p>At best, the high perception of risk and the strong endorsement of an activist response could drive a much greater effort to confront global threats. At worst, with a loss of hope, fear of a catastrophic future erodes people’s faith in society, affecting their roles and responsibilities, and their relationship to social institutions, especially government. </p>
<p>It can deny us a social ideal to believe in – something to convince us to subordinate our own individual interests to a higher social purpose.</p>
<p>There is a deeply mythic dimension to this situation. Humans have always been susceptible to apocalyptic visions, especially in times of rapid change; we need utopian ideals to inspire us. </p>
<p>Our visions of the future are woven into the stories we create to make sense and meaning of our lives, to link us to a broader social or collective narrative. Historians and futurists have emphasised the importance of confidence and optimism to the health of civilisations and, conversely, the dangers of cynicism and disillusion.</p>
<p>Despite increasing political action on specific issues like climate change, globally the scale of our response falls far short of matching the magnitude of the threats. Closing this gap requires a deeper understanding of how people perceive the risks and how they might respond.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was co-authored by Richard Eckersley, founding director of <a href="http://www.australia21.org.au/">Australia21</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47034/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Randle receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>People rate the risks of global threats to humanity surprisingly high. We need to understand the impacts of a loss of faith in notions of material progress and scientific and technological fixes.Melanie Randle, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/270532014-05-29T05:21:02Z2014-05-29T05:21:02ZThe five biggest threats to human existence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49679/original/qxk3fvyn-1401295467.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C195%2C1174%2C855&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Other ways humanity could end are more subtle.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Romeo.jpg">United States Department of Energy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the daily hubbub of current “crises” facing humanity, we forget about the many generations we hope are yet to come. Not those who will live 200 years from now, but 1,000 or 10,000 years from now. I use the word “hope” because we face risks, called <a href="http://www.existential-risk.org/">existential risks</a>, that threaten to wipe out humanity. These risks are not just for big disasters, but for the disasters that could end history.</p>
<p>Not everyone has ignored the long future though. Mystics like Nostradamus have regularly tried to calculate the end of the world. HG Wells tried to develop a science of forecasting and famously depicted the far future of humanity in his book The Time Machine. Other writers built other long-term futures to warn, amuse or speculate. </p>
<p>But had these pioneers or futurologists not thought about humanity’s future, it would not have changed the outcome. There wasn’t much that human beings in their place could have done to save us from an existential crisis or even cause one.</p>
<p>We are in a more privileged position today. Human activity has been steadily shaping the future of our planet. And even though we are far from controlling natural disasters, we are developing technologies that may help mitigate, or at least, deal with them.</p>
<h2>Future imperfect</h2>
<p>Yet, these risks remain understudied. There is a sense of powerlessness and fatalism about them. People have been talking apocalypses for millennia, but few have tried to prevent them. Humans are also bad at doing anything about problems that have not occurred yet (partially because of the <a href="http://heuristics.behaviouralfinance.net/availability/">availability heuristic</a> – the tendency to overestimate the probability of events we know examples of, and underestimate events we cannot readily recall).</p>
<p>If humanity becomes extinct, at the very least the loss is equivalent to the loss of all living individuals and the frustration of their goals. But the loss would probably be far greater than that. Human extinction means the loss of meaning generated by past generations, the lives of all future generations (and there could be <a href="http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html">an astronomical number of future lives</a>) and all the value they might have been able to create. If consciousness or intelligence are lost, it might mean that value itself becomes absent from the universe. This is a huge moral reason to work hard to prevent existential threats from becoming reality. And we must not fail even once in this pursuit.</p>
<p>With that in mind, I have selected what I consider the five biggest threats to humanity’s existence. But there are caveats that must be kept in mind, for this list is not final. </p>
<p>Over the past century we have discovered or created new existential risks – <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-earths-devastating-supervolcanoes-erupt-21943">supervolcanoes</a> were discovered in the early 1970s, and before the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project">Manhattan project</a> nuclear war was impossible – so we should expect others to appear. Also, some risks that look serious today might disappear as we learn more. The probabilities also change over time – sometimes because we are concerned about the risks and fix them. </p>
<p>Finally, just because something is possible and potentially hazardous, doesn’t mean it is worth worrying about. There are some risks we cannot do anything at all about, such as gamma ray bursts that result from the explosions of galaxies. But if we learn we can do something, the priorities change. For instance, with sanitation, vaccines and antibiotics, pestilence went from an act of God to bad public health.</p>
<h2>1. Nuclear war</h2>
<p>While only two nuclear weapons have been used in war so far – at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II – and nuclear stockpiles are down from their the peak they reached in the Cold War, it is a mistake to think that nuclear war is impossible. In fact, it might not be improbable. </p>
<p>The Cuban Missile crisis was very close to turning nuclear. If we assume one such event every 69 years and <a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137679/graham-allison/the-cuban-missile-crisis-at-50">a one in three</a> chance that it might go all the way to being nuclear war, the chance of such a catastrophe increases to about one in 200 per year. </p>
<p>Worse still, the Cuban Missile crisis was only the most well-known case. The history of Soviet-US nuclear deterrence is full of close calls and dangerous mistakes. The actual probability has changed depending on international tensions, but it seems implausible that the chances would be much lower than one in 1000 per year.</p>
<p>A full-scale nuclear war between major powers would kill hundreds of millions of people directly or through the near aftermath – an unimaginable disaster. But that is not enough to make it an existential risk. </p>
<p>Similarly the hazards of fallout are often exaggerated – potentially deadly locally, but globally a relatively limited problem. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb">Cobalt bombs</a> were proposed as a hypothetical doomsday weapon that would kill everybody with fallout, but are in practice hard and expensive to build. And they are physically just barely possible. </p>
<p>The real threat is nuclear winter – that is, soot lofted into the stratosphere causing a multi-year cooling and drying of the world. <a href="http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/">Modern climate simulations</a> show that it could preclude agriculture across much of the world for years. If this scenario occurs billions would starve, leaving only scattered survivors that might be picked off by other threats such as disease. The main uncertainty is how the soot would behave: depending on the kind of soot the outcomes may be very different, and we currently have no good ways of estimating this. </p>
<h2>2. Bioengineered pandemic</h2>
<p>Natural pandemics have killed more people than wars. However, natural pandemics are unlikely to be existential threats: there are usually some people resistant to the pathogen, and the offspring of survivors would be more resistant. Evolution also does not favor parasites that wipe out their hosts, which is why syphilis went from a virulent killer to a chronic disease <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/271/Suppl_4/S174.full.pdf">as it spread in Europe</a>.</p>
<p>Unfortunately we can now make diseases nastier. One of the more famous examples is how the introduction of an extra gene in mousepox – the mouse version of smallpox – made it far <a href="http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=11152493">more lethal</a> and able to infect vaccinated individuals. <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/specials/mutantflu/index.html">Recent work</a> on bird flu has demonstrated that the contagiousness of a disease can be deliberately boosted.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49685/original/pr2bt2sb-1401319790.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49685/original/pr2bt2sb-1401319790.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49685/original/pr2bt2sb-1401319790.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49685/original/pr2bt2sb-1401319790.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49685/original/pr2bt2sb-1401319790.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49685/original/pr2bt2sb-1401319790.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49685/original/pr2bt2sb-1401319790.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/eneas/3471986083">eneas</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Right now the risk of somebody deliberately releasing something devastating is low. But as biotechnology gets <a href="http://www.synthesis.cc/2014/02/time-for-new-cost-curves-2014.html">better and cheaper</a>, more groups will be able to make diseases worse.</p>
<p>Most work on bioweapons have been done by governments looking for something controllable, because wiping out humanity is not militarily useful. But there are always some people who might want to do things because they can. Others have higher purposes. For instance, the Aum Shinrikyo cult <a href="http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_AumShinrikyo_Danzig_1.pdf">tried to hasten</a> the apocalypse using bioweapons beside their more successful nerve gas attack. Some people think the Earth would be better off without humans, and so on. </p>
<p>The number of fatalities from <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.0089">bioweapon</a> and epidemic outbreaks attacks looks like it has a <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0412004">power-law distribution</a> – most attacks have few victims, but a few kill many. Given current numbers the risk of a global pandemic from bioterrorism seems very small. But this is just bioterrorism: governments have killed far more people than terrorists with bioweapons (up to 400,000 may have died from the WWII Japanese biowar program). And as technology gets more powerful in the future nastier pathogens become easier to design.</p>
<h2>3. Superintelligence</h2>
<p>Intelligence is very powerful. A tiny increment in problem-solving ability and group coordination is why we left the other apes in the dust. Now their continued existence depends on human decisions, not what they do. Being smart is a real advantage for people and organisations, so there is much effort in figuring out ways of improving our individual and collective intelligence: from cognition-enhancing drugs to artificial-intelligence software.</p>
<p>The problem is that intelligent entities are good at achieving their goals, but if the goals are badly set they can use their power to cleverly achieve disastrous ends. There is no reason to think that intelligence itself will <a href="http://www.nickbostrom.com/superintelligentwill.pdf">make something behave nice and morally</a>. In fact, it is possible to prove that certain types of superintelligent systems would <a href="http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2011/02/why_we_should_fear_the_paperclipper.html">not obey moral rules even if they were true</a>.</p>
<p>Even more worrying is that in trying to explain things to an artificial intelligence we run into profound practical and philosophical problems. Human values are diffuse, complex things that we are not good at expressing, and even if we could do that we might not understand all the implications of what we wish for. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49686/original/y45kfvj7-1401319920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49686/original/y45kfvj7-1401319920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49686/original/y45kfvj7-1401319920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49686/original/y45kfvj7-1401319920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49686/original/y45kfvj7-1401319920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49686/original/y45kfvj7-1401319920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49686/original/y45kfvj7-1401319920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/shiborisan/7534681780">shiborisan</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Software-based intelligence may very quickly go from below human to frighteningly powerful. The reason is that it may scale in different ways from biological intelligence: it can run faster on faster computers, parts can be distributed on more computers, different versions tested and updated on the fly, new algorithms incorporated that give a jump in performance. </p>
<p>It has been proposed that an “<a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Intelligence_explosion">intelligence explosion</a>” is possible when software becomes good enough at making better software. Should such a jump occur there would be a large difference in potential power between the smart system (or the people telling it what to do) and the rest of the world. This has clear potential for disaster if the goals are badly set. </p>
<p>The unusual thing about superintelligence is that we do not know if rapid and powerful intelligence explosions are possible: maybe our current civilisation as a whole is improving itself at the fastest possible rate. But <a href="http://intelligence.org/files/IE-EI.pdf">there are good reasons</a> to think that some technologies may speed things up far faster than current societies can handle. Similarly we do not have a good grip on just how dangerous different forms of superintelligence would be, or what mitigation strategies would actually work. It is very hard to reason about future technology we do not yet have, or intelligences greater than ourselves. Of the risks on this list, this is the one most likely to <em>either</em> be massive or just a mirage.</p>
<p>This is a surprisingly under-researched area. Even in the 50s and 60s when people were extremely confident that superintelligence could be achieved “within a generation”, they did not look much into safety issues. Maybe they did not take their predictions seriously, but more likely is that they just saw it as a remote future problem. </p>
<h2>4. Nanotechnology</h2>
<p>Nanotechnology is the control over matter with atomic or molecular precision. That is in itself not dangerous – instead, it would be very good news for most applications. The problem is that, like biotechnology, increasing power also increases the potential for abuses that are hard to defend against.</p>
<p>The big problem is <em>not</em> the infamous “grey goo” of self-replicating nanomachines eating everything. That would require clever design for this very purpose. It is tough to make a machine replicate: biology is much better at it, by default. Maybe some maniac would eventually succeed, but there are plenty of more low-hanging fruits on the destructive technology tree. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49687/original/4fh2zf8b-1401320066.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49687/original/4fh2zf8b-1401320066.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49687/original/4fh2zf8b-1401320066.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49687/original/4fh2zf8b-1401320066.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49687/original/4fh2zf8b-1401320066.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49687/original/4fh2zf8b-1401320066.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49687/original/4fh2zf8b-1401320066.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gi/57341575">gi</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most obvious risk is that atomically precise manufacturing looks ideal for rapid, cheap manufacturing of things like weapons. In a world where any government could “print” large amounts of autonomous or semi-autonomous weapons (including facilities to make even more) arms races could become very fast – and hence unstable, since doing a first strike before the enemy gets a too large advantage might be tempting. </p>
<p>Weapons can also be small, precision things: a “smart poison” that acts like a nerve gas but seeks out victims, or ubiquitous “gnatbot” surveillance systems for keeping populations obedient seems entirely possible. Also, there might be ways of getting nuclear proliferation and climate engineering into the hands of anybody who wants it.</p>
<p>We cannot judge the likelihood of existential risk from future nanotechnology, but it looks like it could be potentially disruptive just because it can give us whatever we wish for.</p>
<h2>5. Unknown unknowns</h2>
<p>The most unsettling possibility is that there is something out there that is very deadly, and we have no clue about it.</p>
<p>The silence in the sky might be evidence for this. Is the absence of aliens due to that life or intelligence is extremely rare, or that intelligent life <a href="https://theconversation.com/habitable-exoplanets-are-bad-news-for-humanity-25838">tends to get wiped out</a>? If there is a future Great Filter, it must have been noticed by other civilisations too, and even that didn’t help. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49688/original/bmkbyzmw-1401320244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49688/original/bmkbyzmw-1401320244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49688/original/bmkbyzmw-1401320244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49688/original/bmkbyzmw-1401320244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49688/original/bmkbyzmw-1401320244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49688/original/bmkbyzmw-1401320244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49688/original/bmkbyzmw-1401320244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/angrytoast/2943273893">angrytoast</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>Whatever the threat is, it would have to be something that is nearly unavoidable even when you know it is there, no matter who and what you are. We do not know about any such threats (none of the others on this list work like this), but they might exist.</p>
<p>Note that just because something is unknown it doesn’t mean we cannot reason about it. In a <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0512204">remarkable paper</a> Max Tegmark and Nick Bostrom show that a certain set of risks must be less than one chance in a billion per year, based on the relative age of Earth. </p>
<p>You might wonder why climate change or meteor impacts have been left off this list. Climate change, no matter how scary, is unlikely to make the entire planet uninhabitable (but it could compound other threats if our defences to it break down). Meteors could certainly wipe us out, but we would have to be very unlucky. The average mammalian species survives for about a million years. Hence, the background natural extinction rate is roughly one in a million per year. This is much lower than the nuclear-war risk, which after 70 years is still the biggest threat to our continued existence.</p>
<p>The availability heuristic makes us overestimate risks that are often in the media, and discount unprecedented risks. If we want to be around in a million years we need to correct that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27053/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anders Sandberg works for the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.</span></em></p>In the daily hubbub of current “crises” facing humanity, we forget about the many generations we hope are yet to come. Not those who will live 200 years from now, but 1,000 or 10,000 years from now. I…Anders Sandberg, James Martin Research Fellow, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/266172014-05-12T17:38:26Z2014-05-12T17:38:26ZFrom human extinction to super intelligence, two futurists explain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48297/original/4nh2ghfx-1399915069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The future is uncertain, and that's a problem.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cblue98/7254347346">cblue98</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The Conversation organised a public <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/25cnbr/science_ama_series_we_are_researchers_at_the/">question-and-answer session</a> on Reddit in which Anders Sandberg and Andrew Snyder-Beattie, researchers at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, explored what existential risks humanity faces and how we could reduce them. Here are the highlights.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>What do you think poses the greatest threat to humanity?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Sandberg</strong>: Natural risks are far smaller than human-caused risks. The typical mammalian species lasts for a few million years, which means that extinction risk is on the order of one in a million per year. Just looking at nuclear war, where we have had at least one close call in 69 years (the Cuban Missile Crisis) gives a risk of many times higher. Of course, nuclear war might not be 100% extinction causing, but even if we agree it has just 10% or 1% chance, it is still way above the natural extinction rate.</p>
<p>Nuclear war is still the biggest direct threat, but I expect biotechnology-related threats to increase in the near future (cheap DNA synthesis, big databases of pathogens, at least some crazies and misanthropes). Further along the line nanotechnology (not grey goo, but “smart poisons” and superfast arms races) and artificial intelligence might be really risky. </p>
<p>The core problem is a lot of overconfidence. When people are overconfident they make more stupid decisions, ignore countervailing evidence and set up policies that increase risk. So in a sense the greatest threat is human stupidity.</p>
<p><strong>In the near future, what do you think the risk is that an influenza strain (with high infectivity and lethality) of animal origin will mutate and begin to pass from human to human (rather than only animal to human), causing a pandemic? How fast could it spread and how fast could we set up defences against it?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Snyder-Beattie</strong>: Low probability. Some models we have been discussing suggest that a flu that kills one-third of the population would occur once every 10,000 years or so.</p>
<p>Pathogens face the same tradeoffs any parasite does. If the disease has a high lethality, it typically kills its host too quickly to spread very far. Selection pressure for pathogens therefore creates an inverse relationship between infectivity and lethality.</p>
<p>This inverse relationship is the byproduct of evolution though – there’s no law of physics that prevents such a disease. That is why engineered pathogens are of particular concern.</p>
<p><strong>Is climate change a danger to our lives or only our way of life?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Sandberg</strong>: Climate change is unlikely to wipe out the human species, but it can certainly make life harder for our civilisation. So it is more of a threat to our way of life than to our lives. Still, a world pressured by agricultural trouble or struggles over geoengineering is a world more likely to get in trouble from other risks.</p>
<p><strong>How do you rate threat from artificial intelligent (something highlighted in the recent movie Transcendence)?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Sandberg</strong>: We think it is potentially a very nasty risk, but there is also a decent chance that artificial intelligence is a good thing. Depends on whether we can make it such that it is friendly. </p>
<p>Of course, friendly AI is not the ultimate solution. Even if we could prove that a certain AI design would be safe, we still need to get everybody to implement it. </p>
<p><strong>Which existential risk do you think we are under-investing in and why?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Snyder-Beattie</strong>: All of them. The reason we under-invest in countering them is because reducing existential risk is an inter-generational public good. Humans are bad at accounting for the welfare of future generations.</p>
<p>In some cases, such as possible existential risks from artificial intelligence, the underinvestment problem is compounded by people failing to take the risks seriously at all. In other cases, like biotechnology, people confuse risk with likelihood. Extremely unlikely events are still worth studying and preventing, simply because the stakes are so high.</p>
<p><strong>Which prospect frightens you more: a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riddley_Walker">Riddley Walker</a>-type scenario, where a fairly healthy human population survives, but our higher culture and technologies are lost, and will probably never be rediscovered; or where the Earth becomes uninhabitable, but a technological population, with cultural archives, survives beyond Earth?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Snyder-Beattie</strong>: Without a doubt the Riddley Walker-type scenario. Human life has value, but I’m not convinced that the value is contingent on the life standing on a particular planet.</p>
<p>Humans confined to Earth will go extinct relatively quickly, in cosmic terms. Successful colonisation could support many thousands of trillions of happy humans, which I would argue <a href="http://www.existential-risk.org/concept.pdf">outweighs</a> the mere billions living on Earth.</p>
<p><strong>What do you suspect will happen when we get to the stage where biotechnology becomes more augmentative than therapeutic in nature?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Sandberg</strong>: There is a classic argument among bioethicists about whether it is a good thing to “accept the given” or try to change things. There are cases where it is psychologically and practically good to accept who one is or a not very nice situation and move on… and other cases where it is a mistake. After all, sickness and ignorance are natural but rarely seen as something we ought to just accept – but we might have to learn to accept that there are things medicine and science cannot fix. Knowing the difference is of course the key problem, and people might legitimately disagree.</p>
<p>Augmentation that really could cause big cultural divides is augmentation that affects how we communicate. Making people smarter, live longer or see ultraviolet light doesn’t affect who they interact with much, but something that allows them to interact with new communities. </p>
<p>The transition between human and transhuman will generally look seamless, because most people want to look and function “normally”. So except for enhancements that are intended to show off, most will be low key. Which does not mean they are not changing things radically down the line, but most new technologies spread far more smoothly than we tend to think. We only notice the ones that pop up quickly or annoy us.</p>
<p><strong>What gives you the most hope for humanity?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Sandberg</strong>: The overall wealth of humanity (measured in suitable units; lots of tricky economic archeology here) has grown exponentially over the past ~3000 years - despite the fall of the Roman empire, the Black Death and World War II. Just because we also mess things up doesn’t mean we lack ability to solve really tricky and nasty problems again and again.</p>
<p><strong>Snyder-Beattie</strong>: Imagination. We’re able to use symbols and language to create and envision things that our ancestors would have never dreamed possible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26617/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anders Sandberg works for the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Snyder-Beattie works for the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.</span></em></p>The Conversation organised a public question-and-answer session on Reddit in which Anders Sandberg and Andrew Snyder-Beattie, researchers at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, explored…Anders Sandberg, James Martin Research Fellow, University of OxfordAndrew Snyder-Beattie, Researcher, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/258382014-04-23T11:43:24Z2014-04-23T11:43:24ZHabitable exoplanets are bad news for humanity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46907/original/yzhm4pf8-1398247831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Let's hope it's barren.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-CalTech</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, scientists <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/kepler-186f-the-first-earth-size-planet-in-the-habitable-zone/#.U1EqAuZdX5o">announced</a> the discovery of Kepler-186f, a planet 492 light years away in the Cygnus constellation. Kepler-186f is special because it marks the first planet almost exactly the same size as Earth orbiting in the “habitable zone” – the distance from a star in which we might expect liquid water, and perhaps life. </p>
<p>What did not make the news, however, is that this discovery also slightly increases how much credence we give to the possibility of near-term human extinction. This is because of a concept known as the <a href="http://hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html">Great Filter</a>.</p>
<p>The Great Filter is an argument that attempts to resolve the <a href="http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/fermi-paradox">Fermi Paradox</a>: why have we not found aliens, despite the existence of hundreds of billions of solar systems in our galactic neighbourhood in which life might evolve? As the namesake physicist Enrico Fermi noted, it seems rather extraordinary that not a single extraterrestrial signal or <a href="http://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html">engineering project</a> has been detected (UFO conspiracy theorists notwithstanding).</p>
<p>This apparent absence of thriving extraterrestrial civilisations suggests that at least one of the steps from humble planet to interstellar civilisation is exceedingly unlikely. The absence could be caused because either intelligent life is extremely rare or intelligent life has a tendency to go extinct. This bottleneck for the emergence of alien civilisations from any one of the many billions of planets is referred to as the Great Filter.</p>
<h2>Are we alone?</h2>
<p>What exactly is causing this bottleneck has been the subject of debate for more than 50 years. Explanations could include a paucity of Earth-like planets or self-replicating molecules. Other possibilities could be an improbable jump from simple prokaryotic life (cells without specialised parts) to more complex eukaryotic life – after all, this transition took well over a billion years on Earth.</p>
<p>Proponents of this “Rare Earth” hypothesis also argue that the evolution of complex life requires an exceedingly large number of perfect conditions. In addition to Earth being in the habitable zone of the sun, our star must be far enough away from the galactic centre to avoid destructive radiation, our gas giants must be massive enough to sweep asteroids from Earth’s trajectory, and our unusually large moon stabilises the axial tilt that gives us different seasons. </p>
<p>These are just a few prerequisites for complex life. The emergence of symbolic language, tools and intelligence could require other such “perfect conditions” as well.</p>
<h2>Or is the filter ahead of us?</h2>
<p>While emergence of intelligent life could be rare, the silence could also be the result of intelligent life emerging frequently but subsequently failing to survive for long. Might every sufficiently advanced civilisation stumble across a suicidal technology or unsustainable trajectory? We know that a Great Filter prevents the emergence of prosperous interstellar civilisations, but we don’t know whether or not it lies in humanity’s past or awaits us in the future.</p>
<p>For 200,000 years humanity has survived supervolcanoes, asteroid impacts, and naturally occurring pandemics. But our track record of survival is limited to just a few decades in the presence of nuclear weaponry. And we have no track record at all of surviving many of the radically novel technologies that are <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22002530">likely to arrive this century</a>. </p>
<p>Esteemed scientists such as Astronomer Royal Martin Rees at the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk <a href="https://theconversation.com/astronomer-royal-on-science-environment-and-the-future-18162">point</a> to advances in biotechnology as being potentially catastrophic. Others such as Stephen Hawking, Max Tegmark and Stuart Russell, also with the Cambridge Centre, have <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-hawking/artificial-intelligence_b_5174265.html">expressed</a> serious concern about the exotic but understudied possibility of machine superintelligence.</p>
<h2>Let’s hope Kepler-186f is barren</h2>
<p>When the Fermi Paradox was initially proposed, it was thought that planets themselves were rare. Since then, however, the tools of astronomy have revealed the existence of hundreds of exoplanets. That just seems to be the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>But each new discovery of an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone, such as Kepler-186f, makes it less plausible that there are simply no planets aside from Earth that might support life. The Great Filter is thus more likely to be lurking in the path between habitable planet and flourishing civilisation. </p>
<p>If Kepler-186f is teeming with intelligent life, then that would be <a href="http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf">really bad news</a> for humanity. For that fact would push back the Great Filter’s position further into the technological stages of a civilisation’s development. We might then expect that catastrophe awaits both our extraterrestrial companions and ourselves.</p>
<p>In the case of Kepler-186f, we still have many reasons to think intelligent life might not emerge. The atmosphere might be too thin to prevent freezing, or the planet <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/kepler186_main_final.pdf">might</a> be tidally locked, causing a relatively static environment. Discovery of these hostile conditions should be cause for celebration. As philosopher Nick Bostrom <a href="http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf">once said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The silence of the night sky is golden … in the search for extraterrestrial life, no news is good news. It promises a potentially great future for humanity.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Snyder-Beattie works at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.</span></em></p>Last week, scientists announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, a planet 492 light years away in the Cygnus constellation. Kepler-186f is special because it marks the first planet almost exactly the same…Andrew Snyder-Beattie, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197422013-11-01T13:06:52Z2013-11-01T13:06:52ZTalent is unfair, and genes can’t be used to change that<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34188/original/ggk2p354-1383238984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C245%2C1726%2C1290&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DNA can't help you win.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">saynine</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Talent is unfair. One can quibble about what it actually is. But there is little doubt that it is something that emerges not just from the genes but also from their interaction with the environment. Different people are born with different aptitudes for different things. Some of these aptitudes help a life go well. So through no fault of their own, some people will have less chance of a good life.</p>
<p>If we were to make a choice behind a veil of ignorance between a world where there was more talent to go around and a world with less talent, it seems that the reasonable choice is to choose the world of talent. We would probably also want to choose a world where talent was more equally distributed than one where it was less equal. But even the less talented people in a talented but unequal world could benefit from the greater prosperity and creativity.</p>
<p>In practice talent needs plenty of help to develop: without support and good teachers innate potential is unlikely to matter. So the ability to help kids develop their potential (and help them overcome their less able sides) is important for actualising that talent. Without it none of the above worlds would be preferable. But figuring out how to cultivate and stimulate kids is hard. Hence, any information that could help do this better would be welcome.</p>
<p>So <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/kathrynasbury/2013/10/genes-do-influence-children-and-acknowledging-that-can-make-schools-better/">if genetic information could personalise education</a>, well, go for it.</p>
<p>But I am <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/10377735/Theres-much-more-to-IQ-than-biology-and-DNA.html">less convinced</a> than the geneticists that we can <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/root-of-maths-genius-sought-1.14050">actually do it</a>, at least in the near future. Genetics is hard. It is surprisingly tricky to establish how genes translate into actual outcomes since so much is interacting. Even when there are statistical differences between groups it might not tell us much. </p>
<p>For example, my genes reveal, at least according to one study, that I ought to have three fewer non-verbal IQ points than those who don’t have this particular variant (GG at SNP rs363050). Given that I am in the philosophy faculty at Oxford I can’t be that stupid – no doubt I have compensating genes. Or a really good upbringing. Or maybe the variation only matters in some people. Or with some environments. Knowing about this genetic information would not have helped my teachers to teach me better. Giving some extra non-verbal tasks might have make sense on average to people like me, but it is not clear that it would have helped me. The teachers would have been better off looking at who I was and what tasks I did well or badly at. In cases like this looking at the phenotype, which is the actual behaviour and abilities, is much more revealing that any amount of genotype information.</p>
<p>What if our society starts to pre-judge children based on their genotypes? It certainly is a real risk, but it would be judging that is not based on the science. In fact, it would be stupid – hiring people or channelling kids based on a weak marker for ability rather than actual demonstrations of ability will lead to big mistakes. Maybe the science does lend itself too easily to simplistic caricatures, but the fault is not in the science itself or even pointing out that it might be useful, but in us as a society allowing oversimplifications to rule decisions.</p>
<p>Genetic labelling, even if well-meaning and based on real information, can have detrimental effects. Being told you are a low performer will usually not motivate you. Teacher expectations can easily bias student performance, and vice versa. Genetic markers are ready-made labels – but only if we let them be labels. Genetic determinism is a mistake, and we should not teach it – either through the curriculum, or through the structure of the school itself.</p>
<p>There is a second problem with personalised education. Getting something useful out of the genetic information requires not just good genetic data gathering, but also good educational data gathering. It doesn’t matter if we find associations between genes and grades if we have no idea how to influence things. This will require vast amounts of fairly detailed data and a close collaboration between the behavioural geneticists and educators – not a simple task, as neuroscience has realised when trying to help education. Just because we know how learning works in the brain doesn’t mean we can apply that cognitive knowledge well to education.</p>
<p>In the long run I am sure we will figure out a few useful things the genome does tell us about learning styles, talent or other things that matter for education that could not be detected by a skilled teacher. But that raises another problem: might the personalisation itself be unfair? </p>
<p>I am not talking about the well-off getting better education (that is an issue regardless of genetics). Some kids will have genetic markers that enable useful personalisation that help them excel, and some kids will lack them – they will have to do with standard education. This is in a sense exactly the same unfairness as the random distribution of talent represents, but here it is a random distribution of personalizability. One can still argue that unequal distributions are fine as long as the worse off benefit (educational resources get allocated more efficiently), but it seems that we should strive for something better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19742/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anders Sandberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Talent is unfair. One can quibble about what it actually is. But there is little doubt that it is something that emerges not just from the genes but also from their interaction with the environment. Different…Anders Sandberg, James Martin Research Fellow, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.