tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/existential-risk-7777/articles
Existential risk – The Conversation
2024-01-24T23:42:25Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221871
2024-01-24T23:42:25Z
2024-01-24T23:42:25Z
The Doomsday Clock is still at 90 seconds to midnight. But what does that mean?
<p>Once every year, a select group of nuclear, climate and technology experts assemble to determine where to place the hands of the Doomsday Clock.</p>
<p>Presented by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock is a visual metaphor for humanity’s proximity to catastrophe. It measures our collective peril in minutes and seconds to midnight, and we don’t want to strike 12.</p>
<p>In 2023, the expert group brought the clock the closest it has ever been to midnight: 90 seconds. On January 23 2024, <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/">the Doomsday Clock was unveiled again</a>, revealing that the hands remain in the same precarious position.</p>
<p>No change might bring a sigh of relief. But it also points to the continued risk of catastrophe. The question is, how close are we to catastrophe? And if so, why?</p>
<h2>Destroyer of worlds</h2>
<p>The invention of the atomic bomb in 1945 ushered in a new era: the first time humanity had the capability to kill itself.</p>
<p>Later that year, Albert Einstein, along with J. Robert Oppenheimer and other Manhattan Project scientists, established the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in the hope of communicating to the public about the new nuclear age and the threat it posed.</p>
<p>Two years on, the Bulletin, as it came to be known, published its first magazine. And on the cover: a clock, with the minute hand suspended eerily only seven minutes from midnight.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571103/original/file-20240124-19-crftcr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571103/original/file-20240124-19-crftcr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571103/original/file-20240124-19-crftcr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571103/original/file-20240124-19-crftcr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571103/original/file-20240124-19-crftcr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571103/original/file-20240124-19-crftcr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571103/original/file-20240124-19-crftcr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571103/original/file-20240124-19-crftcr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&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">Cover of the 1947 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists issue, featuring the Doomsday Clock at seven minutes to midnight.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock#/media/File:Bulletin_Atomic_Scientists_Cover.jpg">Public domain/Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>The artist Martyl Langsdorf sought to communicate the sense of urgency she had felt from scientists who had worked on the bomb, including her physicist husband, Alexander. The placement was, to her, an aesthetic choice: “It seemed the right time on the page … it suited my eye.”</p>
<p>Thereafter, Bulletin editor Eugene Rabinowitch was the gears behind the clock’s hands until his passing in 1973, when the board of experts took over.</p>
<p>The clock has been moved 25 times since, particularly in response to the ebb and flow of military buildups, technological advancement and geopolitical dynamics during the Cold War.</p>
<p>Nuclear risk did not abate after the collapse of the Soviet Union, even as the total number of nuclear weapons shrank. And new threats have emerged that pose catastrophic risk to humanity. The latest setting of the clock attempts to gauge this level of risk.</p>
<h2>A precarious world</h2>
<p>In the words of Bulletin president and chief executive Rachel Bronson:</p>
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<p>Make no mistake: resetting the Clock at 90 seconds to midnight is not an indication that the world is stable. Quite the opposite.</p>
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<p>The Bulletin cited four key sources of risk: nuclear weapons, climate change, biological threats, and advances in artificial intelligence (AI).</p>
<p>Two ongoing conflicts – Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and Palestine – involve nuclear-weapon states. Longstanding bulwarks of nuclear stability, such as the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia, are barely functional. North Korea and Iran retain their nuclear ambitions. And China is quickly growing and modernising its nuclear arsenal. </p>
<p>The impacts of climate change are worsening, as the world suffers through its hottest years on record. Six of nine planetary boundaries are beyond their safe levels. And we are likely to fall short of the goal set by the Paris climate agreement – keeping temperature increase to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Dramatic climatic disruptions are a real possibility.</p>
<p>The COVID pandemic revealed the global impacts of a biological threat. Engineered pandemics, created using synthetic bioengineering (and perhaps soon aided by AI tools), could be more viral and lethal than any natural disease. Add to the challenge the continued presence of biological weapons programs around the world, and the shifting disease risk due to the effects of climate change, and biothreats will be a regular battlefront for many countries.</p>
<p>Finally, the Bulletin recognised the risk that comes with advances in AI. While some AI experts have raised the prospect of AI itself being an existential threat, AI is also a threat multiplier for nuclear or biological weapons. And AI could be a vulnerability multiplier. Through AI-enabled disinformation, democracies might struggle to function, especially when dealing with other catastrophic threats.</p>
<h2>Subjective and imprecise, but does that matter?</h2>
<p>The Doomsday Clock has its detractors. Critics argue that the setting of the clock is based on subjective judgements, not a quantitative or transparent methodology. What’s more, it is not a precise measurement. What does “90 seconds to midnight” actually mean?</p>
<p>With the clock now set at its highest ever level, it naturally brings into question why we face greater risk than, say, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. What would it take to get closer than 90 seconds to midnight?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/doomsday-clock-moves-closer-to-midnight-but-can-we-really-predict-the-end-of-the-world-36632">Doomsday Clock moves closer to midnight, but can we really predict the end of the world?</a>
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<p>Fundamentally, these criticisms are accurate. And there are plenty of ways the clock could be technically improved. The Bulletin should consider them. But the critics also miss the point.</p>
<p>The Doomsday Clock is not a risk assessment. It’s a metaphor. It’s a symbol. It is, for lack of a better term, a vibe.</p>
<h2>A powerful image of nebulous threats</h2>
<p>From the very beginning, when seven minutes to midnight “suited the eye”, the Doomsday Clock was an emotional and visceral response to the nuclear moment. Which is why it has become a powerful image, drawing the eyes of the world every year. </p>
<p>Global catastrophic threats are nebulous and complex and overwhelming. With just four dots and two hands, the Doomsday Clock captures the sense of urgency like few images can.</p>
<p>There are better and more actionable ways to assess risk. A handful of countries, for example, conduct national risk assessments. These are formal and regular processes by which governments assess a range of threats to the country, prioritising them on a quantitative scale and building response plans for the highest risk vectors. More countries should conduct these assessments, and be sure to catalogue global catastrophic threats.</p>
<p>Or take the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risk Report. Based on a survey of around 1,500 experts from across academia, business, government and civil society, it captures the greatest perceived threats over the following two and ten years. Following a similar method, the United Nations is currently conducting its own survey of global risk.</p>
<p>The Doomsday Clock does not replace efforts to understand and assess the greatest threats we face. If anything, it should inspire them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221871/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rumtin Sepasspour works for Global Shield, a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to reducing global catastrophic risk. He has previously written for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.</span></em></p>
The Doomsday Clock is not a precise risk assessment, it’s a flawed but powerful metaphor for the catastrophic risk humanity faces
Rumtin Sepasspour, Visiting Fellow, School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/215054
2023-10-05T19:03:36Z
2023-10-05T19:03:36Z
Is there really a 1 in 6 chance of human extinction this century?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552227/original/file-20231005-23-pvcy99.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C4815%2C3106&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/asteroid-hits-earth-3d-rendering-1909820308">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2020, Oxford-based philosopher Toby Ord published a book called <a href="https://theprecipice.com/">The Precipice</a> about the risk of human extinction. He put the chances of “existential catastrophe” for our species during the next century at one in six.</p>
<p>It’s quite a specific number, and an alarming one. The claim drew <a href="https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/humans-have-1-6-chance-21960557">headlines</a> at the time, and has been influential since – most recently brought up by Australian politician Andrew Leigh in a <a href="https://www.andrewleigh.com/what_s_the_worst_that_could_happen_existential_risk_and_extreme_politics_speech">speech</a> in Melbourne.</p>
<p>It’s hard to disagree with the idea we face troubling prospects over the coming decades, from climate change, nuclear weapons and bio-engineered pathogens (all big issues in my view), to rogue AI and large asteroids (which I would see as less concerning).</p>
<p>But what about that number? Where does it come from? And what does it really mean?</p>
<h2>Coin flips and weather forecasts</h2>
<p>To answer those questions, we have to answer another first: what is probability?</p>
<p>The most traditional view of probability is called frequentism, and derives its name from its heritage in games of dice and cards. On this view, we know there is a one in six chance a fair die will come up with a three (for example) by observing the frequency of threes in a large number of rolls.</p>
<p>Or consider the more complicated case of weather forecasts. What does it mean when a weatherperson tells us there is a one in six (or 17%) chance of rain tomorrow?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-science-of-weather-forecasting-what-it-takes-and-why-its-so-hard-to-get-right-175740">The science of weather forecasting: what it takes and why it’s so hard to get right</a>
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<p>It’s hard to believe the weatherperson means us to imagine a large collection of “tomorrows”, of which some proportion will experience precipitation. Instead, we need to look at a large number of such predictions and see what happened after them.</p>
<p>If the forecaster is good at their job, we should see that when they said “one in six chance of rain tomorrow”, it did in fact rain on the following day one time in every six.</p>
<p>So, traditional probability depends on observations and procedure. To calculate it, we need to have a collection of repeated events on which to base our estimate.</p>
<h2>Can we learn from the Moon?</h2>
<p>So what does this mean for the probability of human extinction? Well, such an event would be a one-off: after it happened, there would be no room for repeats.</p>
<p>Instead, we might find some parallel events to learn from. Indeed, in Ord’s book, he discusses a number of potential extinction events, some of which can potentially be examined in light of a history. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552236/original/file-20231005-29-kna72i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A photo of the Moon with craters highlighted." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552236/original/file-20231005-29-kna72i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552236/original/file-20231005-29-kna72i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552236/original/file-20231005-29-kna72i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552236/original/file-20231005-29-kna72i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552236/original/file-20231005-29-kna72i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552236/original/file-20231005-29-kna72i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552236/original/file-20231005-29-kna72i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&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">Counting craters on the Moon can gives us clues about the risk of asteroid impacts on Earth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3662#media_group_352853">NASA</a></span>
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<p>For example, we can estimate the chances of an extinction-sized asteroid hitting Earth by examining how many such space rocks have hit the Moon over its history. A French scientist named Jean-Marc Salotti <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328722000337">did this in 2022</a>, calculating the odds of an extinction-level hit in the next century at around one in 300 million. </p>
<p>Of course, such an estimate is fraught with uncertainty, but it is backed by something approaching an appropriate frequency calculation. Ord, by contrast, estimates the risk of extinction by asteroid at one in a million, though he does note a considerable degree of uncertainty.</p>
<h2>A ranking system for outcomes</h2>
<p>There is another way to think about probability, called Bayesianism after the English statistician Thomas Bayes. It focuses less on events themselves and more on what we know, expect and believe about them.</p>
<p>In very simple terms, we can say Bayesians see probabilities as a kind of ranking system. In this view, the specific number attached to a probability shouldn’t be taken directly, but rather compared to other probabilities to understand which outcomes are more and less likely.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bayes-theorem-the-maths-tool-we-probably-use-every-day-but-what-is-it-76140">Bayes' Theorem: the maths tool we probably use every day, but what is it?</a>
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<p>Ord’s book, for example, contains a table of potential extinction events and his personal estimates of their probability. From a Bayesian perspective, we can view these values as relative ranks. Ord thinks extinction from an asteroid strike (one in a million) is much less likely than extinction from climate change (one in a thousand), and both are far less likely than extinction from what he calls “unaligned artificial intelligence” (one in ten).</p>
<p>The difficulty here is that initial estimates of Bayesian probabilities (often called “priors”) are rather subjective (for instance, I would rank the chance of AI-based extinction much lower). Traditional Bayesian reasoning moves from “priors” to “posteriors” by again incorporating observational evidence of relevant outcomes to “update” probability values.</p>
<p>And once again, outcomes relevant to the probability of human extinction are thin on the ground. </p>
<h2>Subjective estimates</h2>
<p>There are two ways to think about the accuracy and usefulness of probability calculations: calibration and discrimination.</p>
<p>Calibration is the correctness of the actual values of the probabilities. We can’t determine this without appropriate observational information. Discrimination, on the other hand, simply refers to the relative rankings. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/longtermism-why-the-million-year-philosophy-cant-be-ignored-193538">Longtermism – why the million-year philosophy can't be ignored</a>
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<p>We don’t have a basis to think Ord’s values are properly calibrated. Of course, this is not likely to be his intent. He himself indicates they are mostly designed to give “order of magnitude” indications. </p>
<p>Even so, without any related observational confirmation, most of these estimates simply remain in the subjective domain of prior probabilities.</p>
<h2>Not well calibrated – but perhaps still useful</h2>
<p>So what are we to make of “one in six”? Experience suggests most people have a less than perfect understanding of probability (as evidenced by, among other things, the ongoing volume of lottery ticket sales). In this environment, if you’re making an argument in public, an estimate of “probability” doesn’t necessarily need to be well calibrated – it just needs to have the right sort of psychological impact. </p>
<p>From this perspective, I’d say “one in six” fits the bill nicely. “One in 100” might feel small enough to ignore, while “one in three” might drive panic or be dismissed as apocalyptic raving. </p>
<p>As a person concerned about the future, I hope risks like climate change and nuclear proliferation get the attention they deserve. But as a data scientist, I hope the careless use of probability gets left by the wayside and is replaced by widespread education on its true meaning and appropriate usage.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/433-people-win-a-lottery-jackpot-impossible-probability-and-psychology-suggest-its-more-likely-than-youd-think-191946">433 people win a lottery jackpot – impossible? Probability and psychology suggest it's more likely than you’d think</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215054/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Stern 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>
What are the odds of the end of humanity? There’s no real way to know.
Steven Stern, Professor of Data Science, Bond University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/209795
2023-07-27T20:11:18Z
2023-07-27T20:11:18Z
Ancient pathogens released from melting ice could wreak havoc on the world, new analysis reveals
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539710/original/file-20230727-23-jtkhdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C66%2C4025%2C2565&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>Science fiction is rife with fanciful tales of deadly organisms emerging from the ice and wreaking havoc on unsuspecting human victims. </p>
<p>From <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/">shape-shifting aliens</a> in Antarctica, to super-parasites emerging from a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235448/">thawing woolly mammoth</a> in Siberia, to exposed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/books/review/jim-shepard-phase-six.html">permafrost in Greenland</a> causing a viral pandemic – the concept is marvellous plot fodder.</p>
<p>But just how far-fetched is it? Could pathogens that were once common on Earth – but frozen for millennia in glaciers, ice caps and <a href="https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/permafrost">permafrost</a> – emerge from the melting ice to lay waste to modern ecosystems? The potential is, in fact, quite real. </p>
<h2>Dangers lying in wait</h2>
<p>In 2003, <a href="https://ami-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1462-2920.2003.00422.x">bacteria were revived</a> from samples taken from the bottom of an ice core drilled into an <a href="https://byrd.osu.edu/research/groups/ice-core-paleoclimatology/projects/china/guliya">ice cap</a> on the <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/zjN3NVk8TAb6GrxZ9">Qinghai-Tibetan plateau</a>. The ice at that depth was more than 750,000 years old. </p>
<p>In 2014, a giant “zombie” <em>Pithovirus sibericum</em> virus was <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1320670111">revived from</a> 30,000-year-old Siberian permafrost.</p>
<p>And in 2016, an outbreak of <a href="https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/anthrax">anthrax</a> (a disease caused by the bacterium <em>Bacillus anthracis</em>) <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/fjV8u2mRbbC7UoAs5">in western Siberia</a> was attributed to the rapid <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10393-021-01549-5">thawing of <em>B. anthracis</em> spores</a> in permafrost. It killed thousands of reindeer and affected dozens of people.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537599/original/file-20230716-126451-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537599/original/file-20230716-126451-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537599/original/file-20230716-126451-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537599/original/file-20230716-126451-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537599/original/file-20230716-126451-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537599/original/file-20230716-126451-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537599/original/file-20230716-126451-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&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"><em>Bacillus anthracis</em> is a soil bacterium that causes anthrax.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William A. Clark/USCDCP</span></span>
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<p>More recently, scientists found <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.1073">remarkable genetic compatibility</a> between viruses isolated from lake sediments in the high Arctic and potential living hosts.</p>
<p>Earth’s climate is warming at a <a href="https://theconversation.com/it-can-be-done-it-must-be-done-ipcc-delivers-definitive-report-on-climate-change-and-where-to-now-201763">spectacular rate</a>, and up to four times faster <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00498-3">in colder regions</a> such as the Arctic. Estimates suggest we can expect <a href="https://ami-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1462-2920.2012.02876.x">four sextillion</a> (4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) microorganisms to be released from ice melt each year. This is about the same as the estimated number of stars <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Herschel/How_many_stars_are_there_in_the_Universe">in the universe</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-110-years-climate-change-has-been-in-the-news-are-we-finally-ready-to-listen-188646">For 110 years, climate change has been in the news. Are we finally ready to listen?</a>
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<p>However, despite the unfathomably large number of microorganisms being released from melting ice (including pathogens that can potentially infect modern species), no one has been able to estimate the risk this poses to modern ecosystems.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011268">a new study</a> published today in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, we calculated the ecological risks posed by the release of unpredictable ancient viruses.</p>
<p>Our simulations show that 1% of simulated releases of just one dormant pathogen could cause major environmental damage and the widespread loss of host organisms around the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537499/original/file-20230714-15-iyqll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537499/original/file-20230714-15-iyqll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537499/original/file-20230714-15-iyqll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537499/original/file-20230714-15-iyqll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537499/original/file-20230714-15-iyqll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537499/original/file-20230714-15-iyqll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537499/original/file-20230714-15-iyqll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537499/original/file-20230714-15-iyqll0.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Melt water carving a glacier in the Himalayas of India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sharada Prasad</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Digital worlds</h2>
<p>We used a software called <a href="https://alife.org/encyclopedia/digital-evolution/avida/">Avida</a> to run experiments that simulated the release of one type of ancient pathogen into modern biological communities. </p>
<p>We then measured the impacts of this invading pathogen on the diversity of modern host bacteria in thousands of simulations, and compared these to simulations where no invasion occurred.</p>
<p>The invading pathogens often survived and evolved in the simulated modern world. About 3% of the time the pathogen became dominant in the new environment, in which case they were very likely to cause losses to modern host diversity. </p>
<p>In the worst- (but still entirely plausible) case scenario, the invasion reduced the size of its host community by 30% when compared to controls.</p>
<p>The risk from this small fraction of pathogens might seem small, but keep in mind these are the results of releasing just one particular pathogen in simulated environments. With the sheer number of ancient microbes being released in the real world, such outbreaks represent a substantial danger.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/melting-ice-leaves-polar-ecosystems-out-in-the-sun-19807">Melting ice leaves polar ecosystems out in the sun</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Extinction and disease</h2>
<p>Our findings suggest this unpredictable threat which has so far been confined to science fiction could become a powerful driver of ecological change. </p>
<p>While we didn’t model the potential risk to humans, the fact that “time-travelling” pathogens could become established and severely degrade a host community is already worrisome.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537596/original/file-20230716-122897-5fkiun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537596/original/file-20230716-122897-5fkiun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537596/original/file-20230716-122897-5fkiun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537596/original/file-20230716-122897-5fkiun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537596/original/file-20230716-122897-5fkiun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537596/original/file-20230716-122897-5fkiun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537596/original/file-20230716-122897-5fkiun.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">Drilling ice cores in Greenland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Helle Astrid Kjær</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We highlight yet another source of potential species extinction in the modern era – one which even our <a href="https://theconversation.com/children-born-today-will-see-literally-thousands-of-animals-disappear-in-their-lifetime-as-global-food-webs-collapse-196286">worst-case extinction models</a> do not include. As a society, we need to understand the potential risks so we can prepare for them.</p>
<p>Notable viruses such as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421009910">SARS-CoV-2</a>, <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1259657">Ebola</a> and <a href="https://perspectivesinmedicine.cshlp.org/content/1/1/a006841">HIV</a> were likely transmitted to humans via contact with other animal hosts. So it is <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ice-caps-melt-prehistoric_b_9805334">plausible</a> that a once ice-bound virus could enter the human population via a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-viruses-mutate-and-jump-species-and-why-are-spillovers-becoming-more-common-134656">zoonotic pathway</a>.</p>
<p>While the likelihood of a pathogen emerging from melting ice and causing catastrophic extinctions is low, our results show this is no longer a fantasy for which we shouldn’t prepare.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539709/original/file-20230727-25-ftjegw.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539709/original/file-20230727-25-ftjegw.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539709/original/file-20230727-25-ftjegw.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539709/original/file-20230727-25-ftjegw.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539709/original/file-20230727-25-ftjegw.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539709/original/file-20230727-25-ftjegw.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539709/original/file-20230727-25-ftjegw.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539709/original/file-20230727-25-ftjegw.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">They may only be microscopic – and far from the giant flesh-eating bugs you’ll see in sci-fi films – but the risks posed by pathogens shouldn’t be underestimated.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cloud.blender.org/p/gallery/629f23f908e12d4ff15241d3">Giovanni Strona, 2023 (based on previous work by Oksana Dobrovolska)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209795/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.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Giovanni Strona 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>
Researchers simulated thousands of scenarios of an ancient pathogen being released into modern ecosystems. In the worst cases, up to one-third of host species were destroyed.
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 University
Giovanni Strona, Doctoral program supervisor, University of Helsinki
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/209330
2023-07-12T00:10:50Z
2023-07-12T00:10:50Z
What is ‘AI alignment’? Silicon Valley’s favourite way to think about AI safety misses the real issues
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536744/original/file-20230711-17-fgafa9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C816%2C2638%2C1490&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/RoZWxeFL27k">Laura Ockel/Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As increasingly capable artificial intelligence (AI) systems become widespread, the question of the risks they may pose has taken on new urgency. Governments, researchers and developers have <a href="https://theconversation.com/calls-to-regulate-ai-are-growing-louder-but-how-exactly-do-you-regulate-a-technology-like-this-203050">highlighted</a> AI <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-ai-probably-wont-kill-us-all-and-theres-more-to-this-fear-campaign-than-meets-the-eye-206614">safety</a>. </p>
<p>The EU is moving on <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20230601STO93804/eu-ai-act-first-regulation-on-artificial-intelligence">AI regulation</a>, the UK is convening an <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-host-first-global-summit-on-artificial-intelligence">AI safety summit</a>, and Australia is <a href="https://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/GenerativeAI">seeking</a> <a href="https://www.industry.gov.au/news/responsible-ai-australia-have-your-say">input</a> on supporting safe and responsible AI.</p>
<p>The current wave of interest is an opportunity to address concrete AI safety issues like bias, misuse and labour exploitation. But many in Silicon Valley view safety through the speculative lens of “AI alignment”, which misses out on the very real harms current AI systems can do to society – and the <a href="https://write.as/sethlazar/genb">pragmatic ways</a> we can address them.</p>
<h2>What is ‘AI alignment’?</h2>
<p>“<a href="https://brianchristian.org/the-alignment-problem/">AI alignment</a>” is about trying to make sure the behaviour of AI systems matches what we <em>want</em> and what we <em>expect</em>. Alignment research tends to focus on hypothetical future AI systems, more advanced than today’s technology.</p>
<p>It’s a challenging problem because it’s hard to predict how technology will develop, and also because humans aren’t very good at knowing what we want – or agreeing about it.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, there is no shortage of alignment research. There are a host of technical and philosophical proposals with esoteric names such as “<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.03137">Cooperative Inverse Reinforcement Learning</a>” and “<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.08575">Iterated Amplification</a>”.</p>
<p>There are two broad schools of thought. In “top-down” alignment, designers explicitly specify the values and ethical principles for AI to follow (think Asimov’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics">three laws of robotics</a>), while “bottom-up” efforts try to reverse-engineer human values from data, then build AI systems aligned with those values. There are, of course, difficulties in defining “human values”, deciding who chooses which values are important, and determining what happens when humans disagree. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1676638358087553024"}"></div></p>
<p>OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT chatbot and the DALL-E image generator among other products, recently outlined its plans for “<a href="https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment">superalignment</a>”. This plan aims to sidestep tricky questions and align a future superintelligent AI by first building a merely human-level AI to help out with alignment research. </p>
<p>But to do this they must first align the alignment-research AI…</p>
<h2>Why is alignment supposed to be so important?</h2>
<p>Advocates of the alignment approach to AI safety say failing to “solve” AI alignment could lead to huge risks, up to and including the <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_what_happens_when_our_computers_get_smarter_than_we_are">extinction of humanity</a>.</p>
<p>Belief in these risks largely springs from the idea that “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI) – roughly speaking, an AI system that can do anything a human can – could be developed in the near future, and could then keep improving itself without human input. In <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/isENJuPdB3fhjWYHd">this narrative</a>, the super-intelligent AI might then annihilate the human race, either intentionally or as a side-effect of some other project.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-ai-probably-wont-kill-us-all-and-theres-more-to-this-fear-campaign-than-meets-the-eye-206614">No, AI probably won’t kill us all – and there’s more to this fear campaign than meets the eye</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In much the same way the mere possibility of heaven and hell was enough to convince the philosopher Blaise Pascal to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager">believe in God</a>, the possibility of future super-AGI is enough to convince <a href="https://futureoflife.org/cause-area/artificial-intelligence/">some groups</a> we should devote all our efforts to “solving” AI alignment.</p>
<p>There are many <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/the-dangerous-ideas-of-longtermism-and-existential-risk">philosophical</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging">pitfalls</a> with this kind of reasoning. It is also very <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8909911">difficult</a> to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-the-future-of-technology-is-so-hard-to-predict/2022/12/28/57fd3ac2-86b0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html">make</a> <a href="https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/14/1/93/1817720">predictions</a> about technology. </p>
<p>Even leaving those concerns aside, alignment (let alone “superalignment”) is a limited and inadequate way to think about safety and AI systems.</p>
<h2>Three problems with AI alignment</h2>
<p>First, <strong>the concept of “alignment” is not well defined</strong>. Alignment research <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370221001065">typically aims at vague objectives</a> like building “provably beneficial” systems, or “preventing human extinction”.</p>
<p>But these goals are quite narrow. A super-intelligent AI could meet them and still do immense harm.</p>
<p>More importantly, <strong>AI safety is about more than just machines and software</strong>. Like all technology, AI is both technical and social. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1676981309392953345"}"></div></p>
<p>Making safe AI will involve addressing a whole range of issues including the political economy of AI development, exploitative labour practices, problems with misappropriated data, and ecological impacts. We also need to be honest about the likely uses of advanced AI (such as pervasive authoritarian surveillance and social manipulation) and who will benefit along the way (entrenched technology companies).</p>
<p>Finally, <strong>treating AI alignment as a technical problem puts power in the wrong place</strong>. Technologists shouldn’t be the ones deciding what risks and which values count. </p>
<p>The rules governing AI systems should be determined by public debate and democratic institutions.</p>
<p>OpenAI is making some efforts in this regard, such as consulting with users in different fields of work during the design of ChatGPT. However, we should be wary of efforts to “solve” AI safety by merely gathering feedback from a broader pool of people, without allowing space to address bigger questions. </p>
<p>Another problem is a lack of diversity – ideological and demographic – among alignment researchers. Many have ties to Silicon Valley groups such as <a href="https://www.effectivealtruism.org/">effective altruists</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-codex-rationalists.html">rationalists</a>, and there is a <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Good_it_Promises_the_Harm_it_Does/zAamEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=demographics+of+effective+altruism&pg=PA26&printsec=frontcover">lack of representation</a> from women and other marginalised people groups who have <a href="https://facctconference.org/2023/harm-policy.html">historically been the drivers of progress</a> in understanding the harm technology can do.</p>
<h2>If not alignment, then what?</h2>
<p>The impacts of technology on society can’t be addressed using technology alone. </p>
<p>The idea of “AI alignment” positions AI companies as guardians protecting users from rogue AI, rather than the developers of AI systems that may well perpetrate harms. While safe AI is certainly a good objective, approaching this by narrowly focusing on “alignment” ignores too many pressing and potential harms.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/calls-to-regulate-ai-are-growing-louder-but-how-exactly-do-you-regulate-a-technology-like-this-203050">Calls to regulate AI are growing louder. But how exactly do you regulate a technology like this?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>So what is a better way to think about AI safety? As a social and technical problem to be addressed first of all by acknowledging and addressing existing harms.</p>
<p>This isn’t to say that alignment research won’t be useful, but the framing isn’t helpful. And hare-brained schemes like OpenAI’s “superalignment” amount to kicking the meta-ethical can one block down the road, and hoping we don’t trip over it later on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aaron J. Snoswell 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>
Is it possible to ‘align’ AI systems to human interest? A new plan to build an AI system to solve this problem highlights the limits of the idea.
Aaron J. Snoswell, Research Fellow in AI Accountability, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/207680
2023-07-05T12:24:46Z
2023-07-05T12:24:46Z
AI is an existential threat – just not the way you think
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534922/original/file-20230629-25452-lnyw5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C2991%2C1482&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">AI isn't likely to enslave humanity, but it could take over many aspects of our lives.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/humanoid-robot-controlling-business-people-royalty-free-illustration/1363296681">elenabs/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The rise of ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence systems has been accompanied by a sharp <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/06/21/as-ai-spreads-experts-predict-the-best-and-worst-changes-in-digital-life-by-2035/">increase in anxiety about AI</a>. For the past few months, executives and AI safety researchers have been offering predictions, dubbed “<a href="https://venturebeat.com/ai/ai-doom-ai-boom-and-the-possible-destruction-of-humanity/">P(doom)</a>,” about the probability that AI will bring about a large-scale catastrophe.</p>
<p>Worries peaked in May 2023 when the nonprofit research and advocacy organization Center for AI Safety released <a href="https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk">a one-sentence statement</a>: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.” The statement was signed by many key players in the field, including the leaders of OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, as well as two of the so-called “godfathers” of AI: <a href="https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/hinton_4791679.cfm">Geoffrey Hinton</a> and <a href="https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/bengio_3406375.cfm">Yoshua Bengio</a>.</p>
<p>You might ask how such existential fears are supposed to play out. One famous scenario is the “<a href="https://www.economist.com/special-report/2016/06/23/frankensteins-paperclips">paper clip maximizer</a>” thought experiment articulated by Oxford philosopher <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=oQwpz3QAAAAJ&hl=en">Nick Bostrom</a>. The idea is that an AI system tasked with producing as many paper clips as possible might go to extraordinary lengths to find raw materials, like destroying factories and causing car accidents. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/cyberlaw-podcast-how-worried-should-we-be-about-existential-ai-risk">less resource-intensive variation</a> has an AI tasked with procuring a reservation to a popular restaurant shutting down cellular networks and traffic lights in order to prevent other patrons from getting a table.</p>
<p>Office supplies or dinner, the basic idea is the same: AI is fast becoming an alien intelligence, good at accomplishing goals but dangerous because it won’t necessarily align with the moral values of its creators. And, in its most extreme version, this argument morphs into explicit anxieties about AIs <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/05/03/should-we-stop-developing-ai-for-the-good-of-humanity/">enslaving or destroying the human race</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eQ6Q6HINX7I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A paper clip-making AI runs amok is one variant of the AI apocalypse scenario.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Actual harm</h2>
<p>In the past few years, my colleagues and I at <a href="http://umb.edu/ethics">UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center</a> have been studying the impact of engagement with AI on people’s understanding of themselves, and I believe these catastrophic anxieties are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02094-7">overblown and misdirected</a>.</p>
<p>Yes, AI’s ability to create convincing deep-fake video and audio is frightening, and it can be abused by people with bad intent. In fact, that is already happening: Russian operatives likely attempted to embarrass Kremlin critic <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/25/kremlin-critic-bill-browder-says-he-was-targeted-by-deepfake-hoax-video-call">Bill Browder</a> by ensnaring him in a conversation with an avatar for former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Cybercriminals have been using AI voice cloning for a variety of crimes – from <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/14/huge-bank-fraud-uses-deep-fake-voice-tech-to-steal-millions/">high-tech heists</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/voice-deepfakes-are-calling-heres-what-they-are-and-how-to-avoid-getting-scammed-201449">ordinary scams</a>. </p>
<p>AI decision-making systems that <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases-Inequality/dp/0553418815">offer loan approval and hiring recommendations</a> carry the risk of algorithmic bias, since the training data and decision models they run on reflect long-standing social prejudices.</p>
<p>These are big problems, and they require the attention of policymakers. But they have been around for a while, and they are hardly cataclysmic. </p>
<h2>Not in the same league</h2>
<p>The statement from the Center for AI Safety lumped AI in with pandemics and nuclear weapons as a major risk to civilization. There are problems with that comparison. COVID-19 resulted in almost <a href="https://covid19.who.int/">7 million deaths worldwide</a>, brought on a <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/02-03-2022-covid-19-pandemic-triggers-25-increase-in-prevalence-of-anxiety-and-depression-worldwide">massive and continuing mental health crisis</a> and created <a href="https://unctad.org/meeting/world-economic-situation-after-covid-19-shock-and-policy-challenges-ahead">economic challenges</a>, including chronic supply chain shortages and runaway inflation. </p>
<p>Nuclear weapons probably killed <a href="https://www.aasc.ucla.edu/cab/200708230009.html">more than 200,000 people</a> in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, claimed many more lives from cancer in the years that followed, generated decades of profound anxiety during the Cold War and brought the world to the brink of annihilation during the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962. They have also <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/05/04/rattling-nuclear-saber-what-russia-s-nuclear-threats-really-mean-pub-89689">changed the calculations of national leaders</a> on how to respond to international aggression, as currently playing out with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.</p>
<p>AI is simply nowhere near gaining the ability to do this kind of damage. The paper clip scenario and others like it are science fiction. Existing AI applications execute specific tasks rather than making broad judgments. The technology is <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/cyberlaw-podcast-how-worried-should-we-be-about-existential-ai-risk">far from being able to decide on and then plan out</a> the goals and subordinate goals necessary for shutting down traffic in order to get you a seat in a restaurant, or blowing up a car factory in order to satisfy your itch for paper clips. </p>
<p>Not only does the technology lack the complicated capacity for multilayer judgment that’s involved in these scenarios, it also does not have autonomous access to sufficient parts of our critical infrastructure to start causing that kind of damage.</p>
<h2>What it means to be human</h2>
<p>Actually, there is an existential danger inherent in using AI, but that risk is existential in the philosophical rather than apocalyptic sense. AI in its current form can alter the way people view themselves. It can degrade abilities and experiences that people consider essential to being human. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a robot hand points to one of four photographs on a shiny black surface" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As algorithms take over many decisions, such as hiring, people could gradually lose the capacity to make them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/robot-selecting-candidate-photograph-royalty-free-image/924555488">AndreyPopov/iStock via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, humans are judgment-making creatures. People rationally weigh particulars and make daily judgment calls at work and during leisure time about whom to hire, who should get a loan, what to watch and so on. But more and more of these judgments are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2021-0026">being automated and farmed out to algorithms</a>. As that happens, the world won’t end. But people will gradually lose the capacity to make these judgments themselves. The fewer of them people make, the worse they are likely to become at making them.</p>
<p>Or consider the role of chance in people’s lives. Humans value serendipitous encounters: coming across a place, person or activity by accident, being drawn into it and retrospectively appreciating the role accident played in these meaningful finds. But the role of algorithmic recommendation engines is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-is-killing-choice-and-chance-which-means-changing-what-it-means-to-be-human-151826">reduce that kind of serendipity</a> and replace it with planning and prediction.</p>
<p>Finally, consider ChatGPT’s writing capabilities. The technology is in the process of eliminating the role of writing assignments in higher education. If it does, educators will lose a key tool for teaching students <a href="https://doi.org/10.1187%2Fcbe.06-11-0203">how to think critically</a>. </p>
<h2>Not dead but diminished</h2>
<p>So, no, AI won’t blow up the world. But the increasingly uncritical embrace of it, in a variety of narrow contexts, means the gradual erosion of some of humans’ most important skills. Algorithms are already undermining people’s capacity to make judgments, enjoy serendipitous encounters and hone critical thinking. </p>
<p>The human species will survive such losses. But our way of existing will be impoverished in the process. The fantastic anxieties around the coming AI cataclysm, singularity, Skynet, or however you might think of it, obscure these more subtle costs. Recall T.S. Eliot’s famous closing lines of “<a href="https://allpoetry.com/the-hollow-men">The Hollow Men</a>”: “This is the way the world ends,” he wrote, “not with a bang but a whimper.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207680/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston receives funding from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
Nir Eisikovits serves as the data ethics advisor to Hour25AI, a startup dedicated to reducing digital distractions.
</span></em></p>
From open letters to congressional testimony, some AI leaders have stoked fears that the technology is a direct threat to humanity. The reality is less dramatic but perhaps more insidious.
Nir Eisikovits, Professor of Philosophy and Director, Applied Ethics Center, UMass Boston
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/177023
2022-03-01T13:37:02Z
2022-03-01T13:37:02Z
An asteroid impact could wipe out an entire city – a space security expert explains NASA’s plans to prevent a potential catastrophe
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447109/original/file-20220217-25-11g19ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C158%2C5097%2C3275&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A giant asteroid struck Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/chicxulub-asteroid-impact-royalty-free-illustration/713781277?adppopup=true">Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Earth exists in a dangerous environment. Cosmic bodies, like asteroids and comets, are constantly zooming through space and often crash into our planet. Most of these are too small to pose a threat, but some can be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/opinion/16iht-edschweick.4929643.html">cause for concern</a>.</p>
<p>As a scholar who <a href="https://svetlabenitzhak.com/2017/07/10/about/">studies space and international security</a>, it is my job to ask what the likelihood of an object crashing into the planet really is – and whether governments are spending enough money to prevent such an event.</p>
<p>To find the answers to these questions, one has to know what near-Earth objects are out there. To date, NASA has tracked only an estimated <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/faq">40% of the bigger ones</a>. Surprise asteroids have visited Earth in the past and will undoubtedly do so in the future. When they do appear, how prepared will humanity be?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447112/original/file-20220217-1111-ukmxoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A diagram showing thousands of blue orbits overlapping with Earth's own orbit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447112/original/file-20220217-1111-ukmxoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447112/original/file-20220217-1111-ukmxoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447112/original/file-20220217-1111-ukmxoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447112/original/file-20220217-1111-ukmxoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447112/original/file-20220217-1111-ukmxoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447112/original/file-20220217-1111-ukmxoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447112/original/file-20220217-1111-ukmxoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The orbits of thousands of asteroids (in blue) cross paths with the orbits of planets (in white), including Earth’s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210829.html">NASA/JPL</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The threat from asteroids and comets</h2>
<p>Millions of objects of various sizes orbit the Sun. Near-Earth objects include asteroids and comets whose orbits will bring them <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/about/neo_groups.html">within 120 million miles</a> (193 million kilometers) of the Sun.</p>
<p>Astronomers consider a near-Earth object a threat if it will <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/about/neo_groups.html">come within 4.6 million miles</a> (7.4 million km) of the planet and is at least 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter. If a celestial body of this size crashed into Earth, it could destroy an entire city and cause extreme regional devastation. Larger objects - 0.6 miles (1 km) or more - could have global effects and even cause mass extinctions.</p>
<p>The most famous and destructive impact took place 65 million years ago when a 6-mile (10-km) diameter <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691169668/t-rex-and-the-crater-of-doom">asteroid crashed into what is now the Yucatán Peninsula</a>. It <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1177265">wiped out most plant and animal species</a> on Earth, including the dinosaurs.</p>
<p>But smaller objects can also cause significant damage. In 1908, an approximately 164-foot (50-meter) celestial body exploded over the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103518305104?via%3Dihub">Tunguska</a> river in Siberia. It <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/the-tunguska-event-1.742329">leveled</a> more than 80 million trees over 830 square miles (2,100 square km). In 2013, an asteroid only 65 feet (20 meters) across burst in the atmosphere 20 miles (32 km) above Chelyabinsk, Russia. It released the equivalent of 30 Hiroshima bombs worth of energy, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1242642">injured over 1,100 people</a> and caused US$33 million in damage.</p>
<p>The next asteroid of substantial size to potentially hit Earth is asteroid 2005 ED224. When the 164-foot (50-meter) asteroid passes by on March 11, 2023, there is roughly a <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2005%20ED224">1 in 500,000 chance of impact</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447113/original/file-20220217-25-4n6zxf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A graph showing the number of known large, medium and small near-Earth objects." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447113/original/file-20220217-25-4n6zxf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447113/original/file-20220217-25-4n6zxf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447113/original/file-20220217-25-4n6zxf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447113/original/file-20220217-25-4n6zxf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447113/original/file-20220217-25-4n6zxf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447113/original/file-20220217-25-4n6zxf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447113/original/file-20220217-25-4n6zxf.jpeg?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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">NASA has been steadily finding and tracking near-Earth objects since the 1990s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/totals.html">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Watching the skies</h2>
<p>While the <a href="https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/NEO-Impact-Threat-Protocols-Jan2021.pdf">chances of a larger cosmic body impacting Earth are small</a>, the devastation <a href="http://mpainesyd.com/idisk/Public/rocks_from_space/chapman4oecd.pdf">would be enormous</a>.</p>
<p>Congress recognized this threat, and in <a href="https://archive.org/details/nasa_techdoc_19920025001">the 1998 Spaceguard Survey</a>, it tasked NASA to find and track 90% of near-Earth objects 0.6 miles (1 km) across or bigger within 10 years. NASA <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/gallery/neowise/pia14734.html">surpassed the 90% goal</a> in 2011. </p>
<p>In 2005, <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-119/pdf/STATUTE-119-Pg2895.pdf">Congress passed another bill</a> requiring NASA to expand its search and track at least 90% of all near-Earth objects 460 feet (140 meters) or larger by the end of 2020. That year has come and gone and, mostly due to <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12842/defending-planet-earth-near-earth-object-surveys-and-hazard-mitigation">a lack of financial resources</a>, only <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/faq">40% of those objects have been mapped</a>. </p>
<p>As of Feb. 14, 2022, <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/totals.html">astronomers have located 28,266</a> near-Earth asteroids, of which 10,033 are 460 feet (140 meters) or larger in diameter and 888 at least 0.6 miles (1 km) across. About <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/faq">30 new objects</a> are added each week.</p>
<p>A new mission, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5503/text#toc-HB5A37F19BF1E40DC8CF66F29EAE2DD66">funded by Congress in 2018</a>, is scheduled to launch in 2026 an infrared, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-approves-asteroid-hunting-space-telescope-to-continue-development">space-based telescope</a> – NEO Surveyor – dedicated to <a href="https://neos.arizona.edu/">searching for potentially dangerous asteroids</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Yl2f46L5DJ4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Smaller asteroids, like the one that exploded over Russia in 2013, can strike Earth without warning, but larger, more dangerous objects have surprised astronomers, too.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cosmic surprises</h2>
<p>We can only prevent a disaster if we know it is coming, and asteroids have sneaked up on Earth before. </p>
<p>An asteroid the size of a football field – dubbed the “City-killer” – passed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/07/26/it-snuck-up-us-city-killer-asteroid-just-missed-earth-scientists-almost-didnt-detect-it-time/">less than 45,000 miles</a> from Earth in 2019. An asteroid the size of a 747 jet <a href="https://www.jpost.com/science/747-sized-asteroid-skimmed-by-earth-and-scientists-didnt-see-it-coming-680052">came close</a> in 2021 as did a 0.6-mile (1-km) wide <a href="https://www.space.com/16263-asteroid-2012lz1-size-earth-flyby.html">asteroid</a> in 2012. Each of these was discovered only <a href="https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Asteroid_s_surprise_close_approach_illustrates_need_for_more_eyes_on_the_sky">about a day</a> before they passed Earth. </p>
<p>Research suggests that one reason may be that Earth’s rotation <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2021.114735">creates a blind spot</a> whereby some asteroids remain undetected or appear stationary. This may be a problem, as some surprise asteroids do not miss us. In 2008, astronomers spotted a small <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2008tc3.html">asteroid</a> only 19 hours before it crashed into rural Sudan. And the recent <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-have-discovered-a-surprise-asteroid-orbiting-between-mercury-and-venus">discovery</a> of an asteroid 1.2 miles (2 km) in diameter suggests that there are still big objects lurking.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447115/original/file-20220217-15-mq01h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A drawing of a spacecraft approaching two asteroids." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447115/original/file-20220217-15-mq01h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447115/original/file-20220217-15-mq01h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447115/original/file-20220217-15-mq01h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447115/original/file-20220217-15-mq01h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447115/original/file-20220217-15-mq01h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447115/original/file-20220217-15-mq01h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447115/original/file-20220217-15-mq01h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">NASA’s DART mission will crash a small spacecraft into the double asteroid Didymos to see if it will change the asteroid’s orbit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/stay-tuned-for-dart">NASA/JHUAPL/Steve Gribben</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>To protect the planet from cosmic dangers, early detection is key. At the 2021 Planetary Defense Conference, scientists recommended a minimum of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">five to 10 years’ preparation time</a> to mount a successful defense against hazardous asteroids. </p>
<p>If astronomers find a dangerous object, there are <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12842/defending-planet-earth-near-earth-object-surveys-and-hazard-mitigation">four ways</a> to mitigate a disaster. The first involves regional first-aid and evacuation measures. A second approach would involve sending a spacecraft to fly near a small- or medium-sized asteroid; the gravity of the craft would slowly change the object’s orbit. To <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12842/defending-planet-earth-near-earth-object-surveys-and-hazard-mitigation">change a bigger asteroid’s path</a>, we can either crash something into it at high speeds or detonate a nuclear warhead nearby.</p>
<p>These may seem like far-fetched ideas, but in November 2021, NASA launched the world’s first full-scale planetary defense mission as a proof of concept: the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/dart">Double Asteroid Redirection Test</a>, or DART. The <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/asteroids/didymos/in-depth/">large asteroid Didymos</a> and its small moon currently pose no threat to Earth. In September 2022, NASA plans to change the asteroid’s orbit by crashing a 1,340-pound (610 kg) probe into Didymos’ moon at a speed of approximately 14,000 mph (22,500 kph). </p>
<p>Learning more about what threatening asteroids are made of is also important, as their composition may affect how successful we are at deflecting them. The <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/bennu-top-ten">asteroid Bennu</a> is 1,620 feet (490 meters) in diameter. Its orbit will bring it dangerously close to Earth on Sept. 24, 2182, and there is a <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=101955">1 in 2,700</a> chance of a collision. An asteroid of this size could wipe out an entire continent, so to learn more about Bennu, NASA launched the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex">OSIRIS-Rex</a> probe in 2016. The spacecraft arrived at Bennu, took pictures, collected samples and is due to return to Earth in 2023. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=weekly&source=inline-weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>Spending on planetary defense</h2>
<p>In 2021, NASA’s planetary defense budget was <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/updated_fy_2021_spend_plan_june_2021.pdf">$158 million</a>. This is just <a href="https://www.planetary.org/articles/nasas-planetary-defense-budget-growth">0.7%</a> of NASA’s <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fy2022_budget_summary.pdf">total budget</a> and just 0.02% of the roughly <a href="https://www.defense.gov/Spotlights/FY2021-Defense-Budget/">$700 billion 2021 U.S. defense budget</a>.</p>
<p>This budget supports a number of missions, including the NEO Surveyor at <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSngWs2AJa9KoPByrpX-XUgqD6UcMdjl3IW1xAW-m3yCvjreNM6d9KFWkshhxE_sPW9JmgmsaV0NwbG/pubhtml">$83 million</a>, DART at <a href="https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-dart">$324 million</a> and Osiris Rex at around <a href="https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-osiris-rex">$1 billion</a> over several years.</p>
<p>Is this the right amount to invest in monitoring the skies, given the fact that some <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/faq">60% of all potentially dangerous asteroids remain undetected</a>? This is an important question to ask when one considers the potential consequences.</p>
<p>Investing in planetary defense is akin to buying homeowners insurance. The likelihood of experiencing an event that destroys your house is very small, yet people buy insurance nonetheless.</p>
<p>If even a single object larger than 460 feet (140 meters) hits the planet, the devastation and loss of life would be extreme. A bigger impact could quite literally wipe out most species on Earth. Even if no such body is expected to hit Earth in the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-very-real-effort-to-track-killer-asteroids-and-comets-180979206/">next 100 years</a>, the chance is not zero. In this low likelihood versus high consequences scenario, investing in protecting the planet from dangerous cosmic objects may give humanity some peace of mind and could prevent a catastrophe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177023/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Defense, or of any organization the author is affiliated with, including the Air University, Air War College, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Space Force.</span></em></p>
NASA has only mapped 40% of the potentially dangerous asteroids that could crash into Earth. New projects will boost that number, and upcoming missions will test tech that could prevent collisions.
Svetla Ben-Itzhak, Assistant Professor of Space and International Relations, West Space Seminar, Air War College, Air University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/176951
2022-02-17T16:47:28Z
2022-02-17T16:47:28Z
Climate crisis and the dangers of tech-obsessed ‘long-termism’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446718/original/file-20220216-17-vzht6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C6%2C4466%2C2984&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Uthai pr / shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a philosopher who thinks about climate change, a central concern motivating my work in recent years has been anguish that our species and our political-economic systems are <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/rupert-read-imagining-a-world-after-coronavirus/12380676">dangerously short-termist</a>. Indeed, I have a book coming out soon on just this: in <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/why-climate-breakdown-matters-9781350212039/">Why Climate Breakdown Matters</a>, I set out the pressing need for humanity to become more “long-termist” in its outlook. </p>
<p>By this I simply mean things like: we need to care more about what the world will be like in 1,000 years, after (on our current climate-trajectory) most of the world’s ice will have melted. We need true long-term thinking, and we need it fast.</p>
<p>But the reason I felt driven to use scare-quotes above is that the term “long-termist” has in effect been captured by a particular interpretation which, ironically, does not take climate breakdown seriously.</p>
<p>I’m thinking of the situation described by the writer and philosopher Phil Torres in a <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo">recent essay</a>. He argues compellingly that what’s become called long-termism is a “dangerous secular credo”.</p>
<p>What is this credo? It’s the notion that what really matters is humanity’s alleged very long-term potential. This future is allegedly <a href="https://theconversation.com/super-intelligence-and-eternal-life-transhumanisms-faithful-follow-it-blindly-into-a-future-for-the-elite-78538">post-human</a>, or will involve colonising the solar system, the galaxy and the universe. Once one starts thinking this way, almost any sacrifice or indeed crime is justified, in order to keep our species alive. More precisely: to keep alive that part of our species which is betting everything upon big tech, space exploration, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/feb/17/if-they-could-turn-back-time-how-tech-billionaires-are-trying-to-reverse-the-ageing-process">cryogenesis</a> and more.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447025/original/file-20220217-23-1grfwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Space shuttle leaves earth's atmosphere" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447025/original/file-20220217-23-1grfwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447025/original/file-20220217-23-1grfwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447025/original/file-20220217-23-1grfwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447025/original/file-20220217-23-1grfwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447025/original/file-20220217-23-1grfwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447025/original/file-20220217-23-1grfwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447025/original/file-20220217-23-1grfwm.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Long-termists are often big supporters of space travel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alones / shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Torres’s essay exposes how justifiable concern with the existential risks – risks to our very existence – which, increasingly, humanity has come to hang over itself, is morphing into a way of perpetuating the very system that’s created those risks. A big-tech/industrial/academic complex has sprung into existence, which is sucking up money and attention that could be going into thinking about how we could become genuinely long-termist, and is instead focusing that well-paid attention on the idea that the way to prevent ourselves from destroying ourselves is to have much more tech, much <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/none-of-our-technologies-has-managed-to-destroy-humanity-yet">more surveillance</a> (supposedly, to guard against existential threats to humanity coming from non-state terrorists) and much more economic growth. </p>
<p>If you think that Torres and I are exaggerating, here is an example. Oxford academic and leading “long-termist” Nick Bostrom <a href="https://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf">proposes</a> that everyone should permanently wear an Orwellianly-named “freedom tag”: a device that would monitor everything that you do, 24/7 for the remainder of your life to guard against the minuscule possibility that you might be part of a plot to destroy humanity. </p>
<p>This might sound like satire. When I first read Bostrom’s piece, I assumed he was proposing the “freedom tag” idea for rhetorical effect only, or something like that. But no – he means it quite seriously.</p>
<p>And here’s the real trouble: these long-termists, in backing to the hilt the idea of a big-tech, industry-heavy future appear to be calling for much more of the very things that have brought us to this <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/1/3/21045263/climate-change-1-5-degrees-celsius-target-ipcc">desperate ecological situation</a>. </p>
<h2>Not a fully existential threat?</h2>
<p>Proponents of the technotopian conception of long-termism often, extraordinarily, see climate breakdown as only a fairly minor issue since they believe it is not a fully existential threat to our species. Allegedly, technological innovation sprung from within the rich world will eventually “solve” climate change. This is why long-termists such as billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn urge us to <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/the-dangerous-ideas-of-longtermism-and-existential-risk">worry <em>less</em> than we do about the climate</a>.</p>
<p>By contrast, I want to explicitly hold open the possibility that global eco-catastrophe really is a <a href="https://rupertread.net/writings/2017/climate-change-white-swan">“white swan” existential threat</a> (unlike black swan threats, which are unexpected, white swans are of course expected). If that is the case, then the wisest way to truly plan for the long term might even be a possibility virtually uncontemplated by long-termists: the deliberate reduction of our techno-power. </p>
<p>Ultimately, I believe we should work towards a <a href="https://smallfarmfuture.org.uk">relocalised future</a> in which we have democratic control over what technologies get developed. Perhaps this is virtually never contemplated because long-termists are overwhelmingly technophiles from wealthy countries.</p>
<p>The point then is to differentiate between the valid concept of long-termism and the dubious conception of it that’s become almost hegemonic.
We of course need to care more about what the world will be like in the future, after our individual lives are over. In that context, it’s dreadful news that “long-termist” has in effect been appropriated by one particular interpretation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rupert Read is a former Chair of 'Green House' think tank.</span></em></p>
We need long-term solutions, but the idea has been hijacked by a worldview that downplays climate risks.
Rupert Read, Reader in Philosophy, University of East Anglia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/174512
2022-01-07T12:30:06Z
2022-01-07T12:30:06Z
Don’t look up: several asteroids are heading towards Earth – here’s how we deal with threats in real life
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439795/original/file-20220107-33626-1vcalz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=175%2C0%2C2820%2C2384&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Could it happen?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/meteorite-earth-elements-this-image-furnished-302650415">Triff/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Don’t look now – but we are currently experiencing a rash of stories about a forthcoming global catastrophe. But in a change from reports of pandemics and climate change, this global catastrophe is produced by the impact of a giant asteroid. Or comet. Or both. This may feel extra ominous given the events in the recent <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11286314/">Netflix film “Don’t Look Up”</a>, in which the Earth is threatened by a “planet killer” asteroid. </p>
<p>But how worried should we really be – and what would happen if such a body actually hit us?</p>
<p>It has been my experience that killer asteroids tend to strike in the summer months, when news is thin on the ground. Maybe we are so tired of grim news about the spread of the omicron COVID variant and associated problems that a killer asteroid (or comet) makes a refreshing change.</p>
<p>Some UK newspapers have turned to Nostradamus, the 16th century astrologer. A couple ran stories at the end of 2021 about 2022 being the year in which Nostradamus predicted that the world would end in a <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1541692/nostradamus-predictions-2022-asteroids-killer-robots-climate-change-less-prophecies">giant impact with a body from space</a>. This hook has resulted in tabulations of objects that may (or, more likely, will not) come close to the Earth in 2022.</p>
<p>My favourite list was published by the Sun newspaper, <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17209651/nasa-five-asteroids-earth-january/">which described five asteroids</a> heading towards the Earth in January alone. </p>
<p>The scary headline and its accompanying image of an Earth in apparent danger is somewhat undermined by the sentences following the image, in which the newspaper states that “all of the forecasted asteroids this year will pass by Earth by a significant distance and is very unlikely they will hit our planet”. We have already missed (or been missed by) the first two asteroids in this list (2021 YQ and 2021 YX) which hurtled by Earth on January 5 at distances of 1.3 and 2.4 million miles, respectively. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113042/original/image-20160226-26701-1gzrrrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Image of the Barringer crater." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113042/original/image-20160226-26701-1gzrrrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113042/original/image-20160226-26701-1gzrrrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113042/original/image-20160226-26701-1gzrrrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113042/original/image-20160226-26701-1gzrrrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113042/original/image-20160226-26701-1gzrrrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113042/original/image-20160226-26701-1gzrrrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113042/original/image-20160226-26701-1gzrrrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Barringer Crater aerial photo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">USGS/wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No, I didn’t notice them either – and I study asteroids. There are a further three asteroids predicted to pass between 1 and 5 million miles from the Earth in the next few days, ranging in size from that of a car to that of the Statue of Liberty. The one that will get the closest will still be four times as far away as the Moon, so not exactly close calls.</p>
<h2>Is ‘Don’t Look Up’ realistic?</h2>
<p>Don’t Look Up is an allegory, using the globally catastrophic impact of a “planet killer” for the globally catastrophic impact of climate change. It is a tale of corruption, venality and political and corporate self-interest placed ahead of the health and welfare of humanity. It is also very funny.</p>
<p>Without giving away too many spoilers, the plot focuses around two astronomers (a graduate student and her professor) who discover a comet that will collide with Earth in six months’ time. They try to tell the President of the United States (played gloriously by Meryl Streep), but she is more concerned with the mid-term elections.</p>
<p>The film pokes fun at right-wing US politics, the influence of donations to political parties on policy (and politicians), the increasing capacity for modern technology to collect information about health, habits and lifestyle and the use of that information by technology giants. </p>
<p>It does not poke fun at the science though: the discovery of the comet is (sort of) realistic. Which is as it should be, since <a href="https://www.lpl.arizona.edu/faculty/amy-mainzer">Amy Mainzer</a>, Principal Investigator of NASA’s <a href="https://neowise.ipac.caltech.edu/">NEOWISE</a> asteroid tracking programme, was scientific advisor to the production. In the film, the astronomers report their findings to the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/overview">Planetary Defense Coordination Office</a>, which, as the movie shows, is a real organisation operated by NASA.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dpmXyJrs7iU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>So is the film realistic? The Earth has been hit by large asteroids in the past – which is why there are no enormous dinosaurs roaming the planet today. And it is bombarded every day by tonnes of dust and meteorites. It is certain that a “planet killer” is written in the future (though occurring at most once in 50 million years) – and this is taken much more seriously by international governments than is shown in the film. </p>
<p>There is a <a href="https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/mpc.html">well-tested protocol</a> for reporting new asteroids and comets, which is how we know about the ones passing close(ish) to Earth this month. </p>
<p>There are also plans to <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/faq">mitigate the potential consequences</a> from an asteroid on collision course with the Earth. These typically rely on deflecting the asteroid’s course, as trying to shoot it down last minute isn’t feasible – it would take too much energy. The launch in November of <a href="https://theconversation.com/could-we-really-deflect-an-asteroid-heading-for-earth-an-expert-explains-nasas-latest-dart-mission-172603">NASA’s DART mission</a>, a technology-testing mission, will further help shed light on how to best deflect asteroids threatening Earth. </p>
<p>But where Don’t Look Up touches a nerve is the lack of preparedness for the emergency if (when) it finally happens and the mitigation plans have failed. Here I come back to the allegory for climate change. There is no Plan B. In the film, the slogan ‘Don’t Look Up’ is a denial that an approaching comet will destroy the planet – it is portrayed as fake news. </p>
<p>I thought it was a great film. It is entertainment. But it is not fake news. We are a global community and we must act together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174512/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monica Grady is Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences at The Open University. She receives funding from UKRI-STFC and the UK Space Agency. She is Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University and Senior Research Fellow at the Natural History Museum. She tweets @MonicaGrady.</span></em></p>
There’s no need to panic about the asteroids heading ‘close’ to Earth in January.
Monica Grady, Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences, The Open University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/174439
2022-01-06T15:13:49Z
2022-01-06T15:13:49Z
Don’t Look Up shows bashing people over the head with facts does not work
<p>The global top three programmes on Netflix currently include the heroic quest of a monster hunter; the escapades of an American woman in Paris; and, at number one, a dark comedy about climate change called <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81252357">Don’t Look Up</a>.</p>
<p>The film, directed by Adam McKay and featuring a star-studded cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep, tells the story of two scientists who spot a comet rushing toward imminent destruction of Earth. We follow their ill-fated attempts to convince society to act on this existential threat, which generate more interest in the handsome climate scientist than the impending end of the world.</p>
<p>The film has sparked <a href="https://gizmodo.com/why-people-cant-stop-talking-about-dont-look-up-1848288646">enormous discussion</a> online. As an environmental communication researcher fascinated by <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01731-9">the power of storytelling</a>, it’s a debate I have followed very closely. So what does the academic literature on climate change communication tell us about the potential impacts of this film?</p>
<h2>Driving issue attention</h2>
<p>Environmental advocates have long struggled to convey climate warnings to a largely disengaged public – in fact, this inspired the entire premise of the film. That a movie about climate change can hold the top spot on Netflix is therefore a big deal. Its popularity is also being driven, at least in part, by its celebrity cast. Environmental campaigns often <a href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/csp2.261">feature celebrities</a> for this exact reason.</p>
<p>The film’s popularity matters as media can have an <a href="https://oxfordre.com/communication/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-777">agenda-setting effect</a> – audiences assign greater importance to topics that receive more media coverage (known as “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937801300126X?casa_token=4Ryszb9n6S8AAAAA:LSApgyrWxxpfRbOBZwNJBbvhf7QgHXlnW72jlMqZ9NGWiNOocWyrd0NAJELmwYsfb0E2vHw9SA">issue attention</a>”). It is undeniable that the film is driving attention to climate change, regardless of whether viewers love or hate it. Its success also underscores the <a href="https://oxfordre.com/climatescience/climatescience/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228620-e-392">meaningful role</a> the arts and humanities can play in portraying alternative imaginings of climate change.</p>
<h2>It’s OK to laugh at climate change</h2>
<p>Don’t Look Up is not the first instance of comedy being used as a tool for climate change communication. In September 2021, late night comedy hosts in the US <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/23/arts/television/late-night-climate-change.html">joined forces</a> for a climate comedy night and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17524032.2018.1560347">climate internet memes</a> abound. However, a feature-length satirisation of the climate crisis pushes climate comedy to a new level.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439701/original/file-20220106-15-jyeavx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people interviewed on a TV talk show" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439701/original/file-20220106-15-jyeavx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439701/original/file-20220106-15-jyeavx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439701/original/file-20220106-15-jyeavx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439701/original/file-20220106-15-jyeavx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439701/original/file-20220106-15-jyeavx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439701/original/file-20220106-15-jyeavx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439701/original/file-20220106-15-jyeavx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the film a pair of TV hosts make light of news the world is about to end.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Is humour an effective way to engage audiences about climate change? Comedy is a powerful way of communicating and making sense of societal issues, and this <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629818300684?casa_token=RGQ9sZEHawEAAAAA:CHj5knyyYEOuiKrsQXWzfsCSgSvOUl80UzG6WSQ3_QoM9QvAdvJhXv5xqrMdfFDW-XtSvYcPNA">holds true in the climate context</a> where it can help us <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2040610X.2019.1623513?casa_token=Xb3vQozCKogAAAAA:7NRjpWEEr6-kSqE__xUcRWn42wgaf52E1OMNp5qmf6lALh3NTC1aWYiYvAUyqgRhhs2NWsAoIlAh">process and cope with our emotions</a>. </p>
<p>Many of us who care about climate change <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/climate-scientist-dont-look-up-madness?utm_campaign=Carbon%2520Brief%2520Daily%2520Briefing&utm_content=20220104&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%2520Daily">can closely relate</a> to the film’s protagonists as their experiences validate our own feelings of anger, frustration, and sadness about climate inaction. As one of the film’s characters exclaims: “We are trying to tell you that the entire planet is about to be destroyed!”</p>
<p>Good comedy captures absurdities we all experience in our daily lives. We then feel like we are “in on the joke.” This is especially important for climate action as a sense of group belonging is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10463283.2018.1479347">a key predictive factor</a> of individual participation in activism. Therefore, the film might promote a sense of solidarity and shared identity among climate action advocates.</p>
<h2>Who will watch?</h2>
<p>The tricky thing about humour is that it can be polarising. It’s clear who is being satirised when the film depicts Americans wearing red baseball hats emblazoned with the phrase “Don’t Look Up” who deny the existence of the comet.</p>
<p>We can safely assume that those already concerned about climate change are more likely to be drawn to the movie, whereas those being mocked will be less inclined to watch. It is also unlikely that the film will dramatically alter the beliefs of steadfast climate change sceptics or climate activists. Confirmation bias leads us to seek out information that supports our views and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128002834000022">motivated reasoning</a> causes us to process information in ways that support our pre-existing beliefs. The film’s greatest chance of influencing climate engagement is among individuals who are aware or concerned about climate change, but not yet alarmed. This group <a href="https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/projects/global-warmings-six-americas/">represents a majority of the American public</a>.</p>
<h2>Will we stop the comet? (caution: spoilers ahead)</h2>
<p>Will the <a href="https://variety.com/2021/film/news/adam-mckay-dont-look-up-ending-spoilers-1235142363/">film’s dark ending</a> scare us into acting on climate change or will it only paralyse us further? Whether climate change communicators should use fear-inducing or hopeful narratives is a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/04/climate-fear-or-hope-change-debate">topic of significant debate</a>, and my <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-021-02975-8">own research</a> urges caution: we shouldn’t assume that a single piece of content will necessarily lead to dramatic changes in climate-related attitudes or behaviours.</p>
<p>However, communicating our ability to act on climate change – portraying a sense of efficacy or “<a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00020/full">constructive hope</a>” – is crucial. Although the comet ultimately destroys human civilisation in the film, humans did have the opportunity to avert catastrophe. Likewise, it is still in our power to mitigate and adapt to climate change. As Leonardo DiCaprio <a href="https://twitter.com/LeoDiCaprio/status/1474439731731734528">tweeted</a>, “we may not stop this comet but we can stop the climate crisis.” On the other hand, the comet metaphor has limitations. Climate change is a lot messier. Its effects are not evenly distributed nor preventable with a single quick solution.</p>
<p>If Don’t Look Up teaches us anything, it’s that bashing people over the head with facts is not an effective communication strategy. As the comet makes impact with Earth, the movie ends with a heartfelt discussion around the dinner table. If only such candid, tough, and meaningful conversations happened while the society depicted in this film still had time to act. </p>
<p>Fortunately, there is still time for us to act on climate change. As climate scientist <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Saving-Us/Katharine-Hayhoe/9781982143831">Katharine Hayhoe argues</a>, interpersonal conversations are one of the most powerful forms of climate action. This means listening more than we speak, and helping people connect the dots between their personal values and fighting climate change. Sparking dialogue will likely prove the film’s most important long-term impact.</p>
<p>Overall, despite its depressing ending, the fact a satirical film about climate change can reach the top spot on Netflix has me looking up.</p>
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<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?</em></strong>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Josh Ettinger 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>
Will Don’t Look Up wake people up? Here’s what the research on climate communication says.
Josh Ettinger, Doctoral Candidate, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/163376
2021-09-14T09:02:58Z
2021-09-14T09:02:58Z
Drugs, robots and the pursuit of pleasure – why experts are worried about AIs becoming addicts
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411932/original/file-20210719-23-1fx0vl0.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://unsplash.com/photos/R4WCbazrD1g">Rock'n Roll Monkey/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en">FAL</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1953, a Harvard psychologist thought he <a href="http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2807/">discovered pleasure</a> – accidentally – within the cranium of a rat. With an electrode inserted into a specific area of its brain, the rat was allowed to pulse the implant by pulling a lever. It kept returning for more: insatiably, incessantly, lever-pulling. In fact, the rat didn’t seem to want to do anything else. Seemingly, the reward centre of the brain had been located.</p>
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<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/drugs-robots-and-the-pursuit-of-pleasure-why-experts-are-worried-about-ais-becoming-addicts-163376&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>More than 60 years later, in 2016, a <a href="https://openai.com/blog/authors/dario-amodei/">pair</a> of artificial intelligence (AI) <a href="https://openai.com/blog/authors/jack-clark/">researchers</a> were training an AI to play video games. The goal of one game – Coastrunner – was to complete a racetrack. But the AI player was rewarded for picking up collectable items along the track. When the program was run, <a href="https://openai.com/blog/faulty-reward-functions/">they witnessed</a> something strange. The AI found a way to skid in an unending circle, picking up an unlimited cycle of collectables. It did this, incessantly, instead of completing the course.</p>
<p>What links these seemingly unconnected events is something strangely akin to addiction in humans. Some <a href="https://e563b909-928d-4538-97f1-e473938f7515.filesusr.com/ugd/421795_c5b62fc2a0c741e7930cb2204c649acf.pdf">AI researchers</a> call the phenomenon “<a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/wireheading">wireheading</a>”.</p>
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<p>It is quickly <a href="https://deepmind.com/blog/article/Specification-gaming-the-flip-side-of-AI-ingenuity">becoming a hot topic</a> among machine learning experts and <a href="https://openai.com/blog/concrete-ai-safety-problems/">those concerned</a> with AI safety. </p>
<p>One <a href="https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/team/anders-sandberg/">of us</a> (Anders) has a background in computational neuroscience, and now works with groups such as the <a href="https://ai.objectives.institute/">AI Objectives Institute</a>, where we discuss how to avoid such problems with AI; the <a href="https://thomasmoynihan.xyz/">other</a> (Thomas) studies history, and the various ways people have thought about both <a href="https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-humanity-discovered-its-possible-extinction-timeline/">the future and the fate</a> of civilisation throughout the past. After striking up a conversation on the topic of “wireheading”, we both realised just how rich and interesting the history behind this topic is.</p>
<p>It is an idea that is very of the moment, but its roots go surprisingly deep. We are currently working together to research just how deep the roots go: a story that we hope to tell fully in a forthcoming book. The topic connects everything from the riddle of personal motivation, to the pitfalls of increasingly addictive social media, to the conundrum of hedonism and whether a life of stupefied bliss may be preferable to one of meaningful hardship. It may well influence the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=a_ZR81Z25z0C&pg=PA489&dq=At+a+recent+discussion+I+ran+on+designing+our+future,+one+of+the+biggest+fears+of+many+participants+was+that+we+would+become+wireheads.&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjnOC9l5zxAhXklFwKHX_tAoMQ6AEwAHoECA8QAg#v=onepage&q=At%20a%20recent%20discussion%20I%20ran%20on%20designing%20our%20future%2C%20one%20of%20the%20biggest%20fears%20of%20many%20participants%20was%20that%20we%20would%20become%20wireheads.&f=false">future of civilisation</a> itself. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>This story is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.</em> </p>
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<p>Here, we outline an introduction to this fascinating but under-appreciated topic, exploring how people first started thinking about it.</p>
<h2>The sorcerer’s apprentice</h2>
<p>When people think about how AI might “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_control_problem">go wrong</a>”, most <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/stop-using-terminator-images-10b2feb79c78">probably picture</a> something along the lines of malevolent computers trying to cause harm. After all, we tend to anthropomorphise – think that nonhuman systems will behave in ways identical to humans. But when we look to <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.06565">concrete problems</a> in present-day AI systems, we see other — stranger — ways that things could go wrong with smarter machines. One <a href="https://vkrakovna.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/specification-gaming-examples-in-ai/">growing issue</a> with real-world AIs is the problem of wireheading.</p>
<p>Imagine you want to train a robot to keep your kitchen clean. You want it to act adaptively, so that it doesn’t need supervision. So you decide to try to encode the <em>the goal</em> of cleaning rather than dictate an exact – yet rigid and inflexible – set of step-by-step instructions. Your robot is different from you in that it has not <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370221000862">inherited a set of motivations</a> – such as acquiring fuel or avoiding danger – from many millions of years of natural selection. You must program it with the right motivations to get it to reliably accomplish the task.</p>
<p>So, you encode it with a simple motivational rule: it receives reward from the amount of cleaning-fluid used. Seems foolproof enough. But you return to find the robot pouring fluid, wastefully, down the sink.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is so bent on maximising its fluid quota that it sets aside <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/perverse-instantiation">other concerns</a>: such as its own, or your, safety. This is wireheading — though the same glitch is also called “<a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/reward-hacking-in-evolutionary-algorithms-c5bbbf42994b">reward hacking</a>” or “<a href="https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Science/Sneaky-AI-Specification-Gaming-and-the-Shortcomings-of-Machine/ba-p/348686">specification gaming</a>”.</p>
<p>This has become an issue in machine learning, where a technique called <a href="https://deepsense.ai/what-is-reinforcement-learning-the-complete-guide/">reinforcement learning</a> has lately become important. Reinforcement learning simulates autonomous agents and trains them to invent ways to accomplish tasks. It does so by penalising them for failing to achieve some goal while rewarding them for achieving it. So, the agents are wired to seek out reward, and are rewarded for completing the goal.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Deep reinforcement learning in action.</span></figcaption>
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<p>But it has been found that, often, like our crafty kitchen cleaner, the agent finds surprisingly counter-intuitive ways to “cheat” this game so that they can gain all the reward without doing any of the work required to complete the task. The pursuit of reward becomes its own end, rather than the means for accomplishing a rewarding task. There is a <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vRPiprOaC3HsCf5Tuum8bRfzYUiKLRqJmbOoC-32JorNdfyTiRRsR7Ea5eWtvsWzuxo8bjOxCG84dAg/pubhtml">growing list</a> of examples.</p>
<p>When you think about it, this <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.1201/b18612-8/wireheading-addiction-mental-illness-machines-roman-yampolskiy">isn’t too dissimilar</a> to the stereotype of the human drug addict. The addict circumvents all the effort of achieving “genuine goals”, because they instead use drugs to access pleasure more directly. Both <a href="https://ai.objectives.institute/blog/8gwiqyoxcbuzfuc707vz0qb4zugp2g">the addict and the AI</a> get stuck in a kind of “behavioural loop” where reward is sought at the cost of other goals.</p>
<h2>Rapturous rodents</h2>
<p>This is known as wireheading thanks to the rat experiment we started with. The Harvard psychologist in question was <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/olds-james-1922-1973">James Olds</a>.</p>
<p>In 1953, having just completed his PhD, Olds <a href="https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2807/1/olds.pdf">had inserted</a> electrodes into the <a href="https://www.neuroscientificallychallenged.com/blog/know-your-brain-septum">septal region</a> of rodent brains – in the lower frontal lobe – so that wires trailed out of their craniums. As mentioned, he allowed them to zap this region of their own brains by pulling a lever. This was later <a href="https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=10174450524035796509&hl=en&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5">dubbed</a> “self-stimulation”.</p>
<p>Olds found his rats self-stimulated compulsively, ignoring all other needs and desires. Publishing his results <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13233369/">with his colleague Peter Milner</a> in the following year, the pair reported that they lever-pulled at a rate of “1,920 responses an hour”. That’s once every two seconds. The rats seemed to love it.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WIRQRN8AAAAJ&hl=en">Contemporary neuroscientists</a> have since questioned Olds’s results and offered a more complex picture, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004012/">implying that</a> the stimulation may have simply been causing a feeling of <em>“wanting”</em> devoid of any <em>“liking”</em>. Or, in other words, the animals may have been experiencing pure craving without any pleasurable enjoyment at all. However, back in the 1950s, Olds and others <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24941787">soon announced</a> the discovery of the “pleasure centers” of the brain.</p>
<p>Prior to Olds’s experiment, pleasure was a dirty word in psychology: the prevailing belief had been that motivation should largely be explained negatively, as the avoidance of pain rather than the pursuit of pleasure. But, here, pleasure seemed undeniably to be a positive behavioural force. Indeed, it looked like a <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-00789-006">positive feedback loop</a>. There was apparently nothing to stop the animal stimulating itself to exhaustion.</p>
<p>It wasn’t long until a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=09tqAAAAMAAJ&q=%22popular+and+misleading+accounts+of+an+experiment%22&dq=%22popular+and+misleading+accounts+of+an+experiment%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjXs-uCvKHxAhXd6OAKHWlEAxUQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg">rumour began spreading</a> that the rats regularly lever-pressed to the point of starvation. The explanation was this: once you have tapped into the source of all reward, all other rewarding tasks — even the things required for survival — fall away as uninteresting and unnecessary, even to the point of death.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Self-stimulation experiments.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Like the Coastrunner AI, if you accrue reward directly – without having to bother with any of the work of completing the actual track – then why not just loop indefinitely? For a living animal, which has multiple requirements for survival, such dominating compulsion might prove deadly. Food is pleasing, but if you decouple pleasure from feeding, then the pursuit of pleasure might win out over finding food.</p>
<p>Though no rats perished in the original 1950s experiments, later experiments did seem to demonstrate the deadliness of electrode-induced pleasure. Having ruled out the possibility that the electrodes were creating artificial feelings of satiation, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0031938471901442">one 1971 study</a> seemingly demonstrated that electrode pleasure could indeed <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6SFIAQAAIAAJ&q=%22a+full+competitor+with+pain+and+the+basic+needs%22&dq=%22a+full+competitor+with+pain+and+the+basic+needs%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjSv4qFu6HxAhUXxBQKHb6JDRcQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg">outcompete other drives</a>, and do so to the point of <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03326713.pdf">self-starvation</a>.</p>
<p>Word quickly spread. Throughout the 1960s, identical experiments were conducted on <a href="https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/physrev.1962.42.4.554">other animals beyond</a> the humble lab rat: from goats and guinea pigs to goldfish. Rumour even <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/uclalr15&div=19&id=&page=">spread</a> of a dolphin who had been allowed to self-stimulate, and, after being “left in a pool with the switch connected”, had “delighted himself to death after an all-night orgy of pleasure”.</p>
<p>This dolphin’s grisly death-by-seizure was, in fact, more likely caused by the way the electrode was inserted: with a hammer. The scientist <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1963-02563-001">behind this experiment</a> was the extremely eccentric <a href="https://www.johnclilly.com/">J C Lilly</a>, inventor of the flotation tank and prophet of inter-species communication, who had also turned monkeys into wireheads. He had reported, in 1961, of a particularly boisterous monkey becoming overweight from intoxicated inactivity after becoming preoccupied with pulling his lever, repetitively, for pleasure shocks.</p>
<p>One researcher (who had worked in Olds’s lab) <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24955852">asked</a> whether an “animal more intelligent than the rat” would “show the same maladaptive behaviour”. Experiments on monkeys and dolphins had given some indication as to the answer. </p>
<p>But in fact, a number of dubious experiments had already been performed on humans.</p>
<h2>Human wireheads</h2>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=k4kqDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=robert+galbraith+heath+pleasure+shock&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-vcK_wKHxAhUS_BQKHVr4BxQQ6AEwAHoECAcQAg#v=onepage&q=robert%20galbraith%20heath%20pleasure%20shock&f=false">Robert Galbraith Heath</a> remains a highly <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/the-1970s-gay-cure-experiments-written-out-of-scientific-history/">controversial figure</a> in the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28859564/">history of neuroscience</a>. Among other things, he performed experiments involving <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13424746/">transfusing blood</a> from people with schizophrenia to people without the condition, to see if he could induce its symptoms (Heath claimed this worked, but other scientists <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0964704X.2010.487427">could not replicate</a> his results.) He <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xof4BkbI1DQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=tulane:+the+emergence+of+a+modern+university&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22heath%22%20%22cia%22&f=false">may also</a> have been involved in murky attempts to find military uses for deep-brain electrodes.</p>
<p>Since 1952, Heath <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&redir_esc=y&id=27prAAAAMAAJ&dq=Studies+in+Schizophrenia%3A+A+Multidisciplinary+Approach+to+Mind-Brain+Relationships+heath&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22pleasurable+reaction%22">had been recording</a> pleasurable responses to deep-brain stimulation in human patients who had had electrodes installed due to debilitating illnesses such as epilepsy or schizophrenia.</p>
<p>During the 1960s, in a series of questionable experiments, Heath’s electrode-implanted subjects — anonymously named “B-10” and “B-12” — were allowed to press buttons to stimulate their own reward centres. They reported feelings of extreme pleasure and overwhelming compulsion to repeat. A journalist later commented that this made his subjects “zombies”. One subject <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14086435/">reported</a> sensations “better than sex”.</p>
<p>In 1961, Heath attended <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xukdjy8p">a symposium</a> on brain stimulation, where another researcher — <a href="https://www.wireheading.com/jose-delgado.html">José Delgado</a> — had hinted that pleasure-electrodes could be used to “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1965/05/17/archives/matador-with-a-radio-stops-wired-bull-modified-behavior-in-animals.html">brainwash</a>” subjects, altering their “natural” inclinations. Delgado would later play the matador and bombastically demonstrate this by pacifying an implanted bull. But at the 1961 symposium <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=17990224062094327735&hl=en&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5">he suggested</a> electrodes could alter sexual preferences.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/23pXqY3X6c8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Delgado ‘brainwashing the bull’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Heath was inspired. A decade later, he even tried to use electrode technology to “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0005791672900298">re-program</a>” the sexual orientation of a homosexual male patient named “B-19”. Heath thought electrode stimulation could convert his subject by “training” B-19’s brain to associate pleasure with “heterosexual” stimuli. He convinced himself that it worked (although there is no evidence it did).</p>
<p>Despite being ethically and scientifically disastrous, the episode – which was eventually <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/the-man-who-fried-gay-people-s-brains-a7119181.html">picked up</a> by the press and condemned by gay rights campaigners – no doubt greatly shaped the myth of wireheading: if it can “make a gay man straight” (as Heath believed), what can’t it do?</p>
<h2>Hedonism helmets</h2>
<p>From here, the idea took hold in wider culture and the myth spread. By 1963, the prolific science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was already extruding worrisome consequences from the electrodes. He feared that it might lead to an “addiction to end all addictions”, the results of which are “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&redir_esc=y&id=g4ErAQAAMAAJ&dq=Isaac+Asimov%2C+The+Human+Brain%3A+Its+Capacities+and+Functions&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22distressing+to+contemplate%22">distressing to contemplate</a>”.</p>
<p>By 1975, philosophy <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42588515?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">papers</a> were using electrodes in thought experiments. One paper imagined “warehouses” filled up with people — in cots — hooked up to “pleasure helmets”, experiencing unconscious bliss. Of course, most would argue this would not fulfil our “deeper needs”. But, the author asked, “what about a "super-pleasure helmet”? One that not only delivers “great sensual pleasure”, but also simulates any meaningful experience — from writing a symphony to meeting divinity itself? It may not be really real, but it “would seem perfect; perfect seeming is the same as being”.</p>
<p>The author concluded: “What is there to object in all this? Let’s face it: nothing”.</p>
<p>The idea of the human species dropping out of reality in pursuit of artificial pleasures quickly made its way through science fiction. The same year as Asimov’s intimations, in 1963, Herbert W. Franke published his novel, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6398163-the-orchid-cage">The Orchid Cage</a>.</p>
<p>It foretells a future wherein intelligent machines have been engineered to maximise human happiness, come what may. Doing their duty, the machines reduce humans to indiscriminate flesh-blobs, removing all unnecessary organs. Many appendages, after all, only cause pain. Eventually, all that is left of humanity are disembodied pleasure centres, incapable of experiencing anything other than homogeneous bliss.</p>
<p>From there, the idea percolated through science fiction. From Larry Niven’s 1969 story “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_Ecstasy">Death by Ecstasy</a>”, where the word “wirehead” is first coined, through Spider Robinson’s 1982 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindkiller">Mindkiller</a>, the tagline of which is “Pleasure — it’s the only way to die”.</p>
<h2>Supernormal stimuli</h2>
<p>But we humans don’t even need to implant invasive electrodes to make our motivations misfire. Unlike rodents, or <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/dolphin-intelligence-and-humanitys-cosmic-future">even dolphins</a>, we are <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/anthropocene-2770">uniquely good</a> at <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-science-fiction-scenario-of-an-artificial-planet-is-already-here-155574">altering our environment</a>. Modern humans are also good at inventing — and profiting from — artificial products that are abnormally alluring (in the sense that our ancestors would never have had to resist them in the wild). We manufacture our own ways to distract ourselves.</p>
<p>Around the same time as Olds’s experiments with the rats, the Nobel-winning biologist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1973/tinbergen/biographical/">Nikolaas Tinbergen</a> was researching animal behaviour. He noticed that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4532715?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">something interesting</a> happened when a stimulus that triggers an instinctual behaviour is artificially exaggerated beyond its natural proportions. The intensity of the behavioural response does not tail off as the stimulus becomes more intense, and artificially exaggerated, but becomes stronger: even to the point that the response becomes damaging for the organism.</p>
<p>For example, given a choice between a <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100543339">bigger and spottier</a> counterfeit egg and the real thing, Tinbergen found birds preferred hyperbolic fakes at the cost of neglecting their own offspring. He referred to such preternaturally alluring fakes as “<a href="https://www.sparringmind.com/supernormal-stimuli/">supernormal stimuli</a>”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t1pOZbytOhE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Supernormal stimuli.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some, therefore, have asked: could <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jq73GozjsuhdwMLEG/superstimuli-and-the-collapse-of-western-civilization">it be</a> that, living in a <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/Supernormal-Stimuli/">modernised and manufactured world</a> — replete with fast-food and pornography — humanity has similarly <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nireyal/2013/01/11/how-technology-is-like-bug-sex/">started surrendering</a> its own resilience in place of <a href="http://readthis.wtf/writing/hyperplastic-supernormal/">supernormal convenience</a>?</p>
<h2>Old fears</h2>
<p>As technology makes artificial pleasures more available and alluring, it can sometimes seem that they are out-competing the attention we allocate to “natural” impulses required for survival. People often point to <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-and-technology/2020/02/gaming-disorder-rise-of-21st-century-epidemic">video game addiction</a>. Compulsively and repetitively pursuing such rewards, to the detriment of one’s health, is not all too different from the AI spinning in a circle in Coastrunner. Rather than accomplishing any “genuine goal” (completing the race track or maintaining genuine fitness), one falls into the trap of accruing some faulty measure of that goal (accumulating points or counterfeit pleasures).</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411909/original/file-20210719-21-152p0uu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A drawing depicts a smiling man and a woman with wires coming out of their heads, leading to buttons in each others' hands." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411909/original/file-20210719-21-152p0uu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411909/original/file-20210719-21-152p0uu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411909/original/file-20210719-21-152p0uu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411909/original/file-20210719-21-152p0uu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411909/original/file-20210719-21-152p0uu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1290&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411909/original/file-20210719-21-152p0uu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1290&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411909/original/file-20210719-21-152p0uu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1290&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration from a 1970 James Olds paper: ‘Pleasure Centers in the Brain’. Engineering and Science, 33 (7). pp. 22-31.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechES:33.7.olds">Caltech Magazine</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But people have been panicking about this type of pleasure-addled doom long before any AIs were trained to play games and even long before electrodes were pushed into rodent craniums. Back in the 1930s, sci-fi author <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933190-600-last-and-first-men-review-an-epic-2-billion-year-history-of-humanity/">Olaf Stapledon</a> was writing about civilisational collapse brought on by “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gPR4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT31&lpg=PT31&dq=%22It+worked+not+through+the+sense+organs,+but+direct+stimulation+of+the%22&source=bl&ots=ZbfoiTDUT3&sig=ACfU3U3go7alUu7Wnmaa1sGhUBha8do5kw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiGlpStypzxAhWogP0HHUi2C68Q6AEwAHoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=%22It%20worked%20not%20through%20the%20sense%20organs%2C%20but%20direct%20stimulation%20of%20the%22&f=false">skullcaps</a>” that generate “illusory” ecstasies by “direct stimulation” of “brain-centers”.</p>
<p>The idea is even older, though. Thomas has studied the myriad ways people in the past have feared that our species could be sacrificing genuine longevity for short-term pleasures or conveniences. His book <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/x-risk">X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered its Own Extinction</a> explores the roots of this fear and how it first really took hold in Victorian Britain: when the sheer extent of industrialisation — and humanity’s growing reliance on artificial contrivances — first became apparent.</p>
<h2>Carnal crustacea</h2>
<p>Having digested Darwin’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Darwin/On-the-Origin-of-Species">1859 classic</a>, the biologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edwin-Ray-Lankester">Ray Lankester</a> decided to supply a Darwinian explanation for parasitic organisms. He noticed that the evolutionary ancestors of parasites were often more “complex”. Parasitic organisms had lost ancestral features like limbs, eyes, or other complex organs.</p>
<p>Lankester <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/degeneration-a-view-of-evolution">theorised that</a>, because the parasite leeches off their host, they lose the need to fend for themselves. Piggybacking off the host’s bodily processes, their own organs — for perception and movement — atrophy. His favourite example was a parasitic barnacle, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-crab-castrating-parasite-that-zombifies-its-prey-27200">named the <em>Sacculina</em></a>, which starts life as a segmented organism with a demarcated head. After <a href="https://blog.rsb.org.uk/sacculina-parasite/">attaching to</a> a host, however, the crustacean “regresses” into an amorphous, headless blob, sapping nutrition from their host like the wirehead plugs into current.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411911/original/file-20210719-15-ozukb8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white drawings of sea creature and their larvae." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411911/original/file-20210719-15-ozukb8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411911/original/file-20210719-15-ozukb8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411911/original/file-20210719-15-ozukb8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411911/original/file-20210719-15-ozukb8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411911/original/file-20210719-15-ozukb8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411911/original/file-20210719-15-ozukb8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411911/original/file-20210719-15-ozukb8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drawings of crustaceans and larvae. The sacculini is depicted in the bottom left corner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Evolution_and_animal_life;_an_elementary_discussion_of_facts,_processes,_laws_and_theories_relating_to_the_life_and_evolution_of_animals_(1907)_(14586636580).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the Victorian mind, it was a short step to conjecture that — due to increasing levels of comfort throughout the industrialised world — humanity could be evolving in the direction of the barnacle. “Perhaps we are all drifting, tending to the condition of intellectual barnacles,” Lankester <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216849/page/n71/mode/2up?q=intellectual+barnacles">mused</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, not long prior to this, the satirist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Butler-English-author-1835-1902">Samuel Butler</a> had speculated that humans, in their headlong pursuit of automated convenience, were withering into nothing but a “<a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/butler-samuel/1872/erewhon/ch24.htm">sort of parasite</a>” upon their own industrial machines.</p>
<h2>True nirvana</h2>
<p>By the 1920s, Julian Huxley <a href="https://archive.org/details/essaysofbiologis1923huxl/page/68/mode/2up?q=darwinian+tapeworms">penned a short poem</a>. It jovially explored the ways a species can “progress”. Crabs, of course, decided progress was sideways. But what of the tapeworm? He wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Darwinian Tapeworms on the other hand<br>
Agree that Progress is a loss of brain,<br>
And all that makes it hard for worms to attain<br>
The true Nirvana — peptic, pure, and grand. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The fear that we could follow the tapeworm was somewhat widespread in the interwar generation. Huxley’s own brother, Aldous, would provide his own vision of the dystopian potential for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/nov/17/classics.margaretatwood">pharmaceutically-induced pleasures</a> in his 1932 novel <a href="https://theconversation.com/brave-new-world-the-pill-popping-social-media-obsessed-dystopia-we-live-in-72511">Brave New World</a>.</p>
<p>A friend of the Huxleys, the British-Indian geneticist and futurologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/futurology-how-a-group-of-visionaries-looked-beyond-the-possible-a-century-ago-and-predicted-todays-world-118134">J B S Haldane</a> also worried that humanity might be on the path of the parasite: sacrificing genuine dignity at the altar of automated ease, just like the rodents who would later sacrifice survival for easy pleasure-shocks.</p>
<p>Haldane warned: “The ancestors [of] barnacles had heads” – and in the pursuit of pleasantness — “man may just as easily lose his intelligence”. This <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_(novel)">particular fear</a> has not <a href="https://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/evolution.html">really</a> <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/">ever</a> <a href="https://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0408/0408521.pdf">gone</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanence_(novel)">away</a>.</p>
<p>So, the notion of civilisation derailing through seeking counterfeit pleasures, rather than genuine longevity, is old. And, indeed, the older an idea is — and the more stubbornly recurrent it is — the more we should be wary that it is a preconception rather than anything based on evidence. So, is there anything to these fears?</p>
<p>In an age of increasingly <a href="https://theconversation.com/nz/topics/social-media-addiction-53153">attention-grabbing algorithmic media</a>, it can seem that faking signals of fitness often yields more success than pursuing the real thing. Like Tinbergen’s birds, we prefer exaggerated artifice to the genuine article. And the <a href="https://dianaverse.com/2020/10/30/uncanny-vulvas/">sexbots</a> have not even <a href="https://theconversation.com/sex-bots-virtual-friends-vr-lovers-tech-is-changing-the-way-we-interact-and-not-always-for-the-better-159427">arrived yet</a>.</p>
<p>Because of this, some experts conjecture that “wirehead collapse” might well <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZLPEju49nGxy4cFkf/wireheading-as-a-possible-contributor-to-civilizational">threaten</a> civilisation. Our distractions are only going to get more attention grabbing, not less.</p>
<p>Already by 1964, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-beautiful-mind-bending-of-stanislaw-lem">Polish futurologist</a> Stanisław Lem <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZO5zDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT352&dq=%22olds+and+milner%27s+article+is+well+known+by+now%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwihtsj-gtbxAhWHDsAKHb1lDxIQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=%22olds%20and%20milner's%20article%20is%20well%20known%20by%20now%22&f=false">connected</a> Olds’s rats to the behaviour of humans in the modern consumerist world - pointing to “cinema”, “pornography”, and “Disneyland”. He conjectured that technological civilisations might cut themselves off from reality, becoming “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZO5zDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT354&lpg=PT354&dq=%22phantomatics+seems+to+be+a+sort+of+pinnacle+around+which+various+contemporary+technologies+of+entertainment+converge%22&source=bl&ots=d4TVmXeJ8S&sig=ACfU3U3bZ19WSYhQHfRISAAwx0jXzr2NfA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjuzovrgtbxAhUMT8AKHWXkCQoQ6AEwAHoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=%22phantomatics%20seems%20to%20be%20a%20sort%20of%20pinnacle%20around%20which%20various%20contemporary%20technologies%20of%20entertainment%20converge%22&f=false">encysted</a>” within their own virtual pleasure simulations.</p>
<h2>Addicted aliens</h2>
<p>Lem, and others since, have even ventured that <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404">the reason</a> our telescopes <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-the-world-a-history-of-how-a-silent-cosmos-led-humans-to-fear-the-worst-120193">haven’t found</a> evidence of advanced spacefaring <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/fermi-paradox-35915">alien civilizations</a> is because all advanced cultures — here and elsewhere — inevitably create more pleasurable virtual alternatives to exploring outer space. <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/intro-to-reinforcement-learning-the-explore-exploit-dilemma-463ceb004989#:%7E:text=After%20the%20exploration%2C%20he%20may,current%20acquired%20knowledge%20or%20information.&text=This%20is%20the%20explore%2Dexploit%20dilemma%20in%20reinforcement%20learning">Exploration</a> is difficult and risky, after all.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Sketch of an alien above an insular domed civilisation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408144/original/file-20210624-15-l7323d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408144/original/file-20210624-15-l7323d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408144/original/file-20210624-15-l7323d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408144/original/file-20210624-15-l7323d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408144/original/file-20210624-15-l7323d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408144/original/file-20210624-15-l7323d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408144/original/file-20210624-15-l7323d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration to a journal article on the ‘intelligence paradox’. The caption reads: ‘Evolution of intelligence will always lead to a drive for environmental utopia. Hence, many species may well get fat and spend much of their GDP on healthcare. Life may be everywhere, but due to obesity-related medical issues, it might have to pay a healthcare tax and simply not be able to afford space travel.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nutritionandmetabolism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-7075-11-34">© 2014 Nunn et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Back in the countercultural heyday of the 1960s, the molecular biologist <a href="https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/inmemoriam/html/gunthersstent.html">Gunther Stent</a> suggested that this process would happen through “global hegemony of beat attitudes”. Referencing Olds’s experiments, he helped himself to the speculation that hippie drug-use was the prelude to <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Coming_of_the_Golden_Age/jz5eAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=gunther%20stent%20golden%20age">civilisations wireheading</a>. At a 1971 conference on the search for extraterrestrials, Stent <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Communication_with_Extraterrestrial_Inte/iXIsAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=%22archipelago%20whose%20tenants%20are%20mostly%20concerned%20about%20their%20inner%20life%20and%20not%20anxious%20to%20communicate%22">suggested</a> that, instead of expanding bravely outwards, civilisations <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2011.11.006">collapse inwards</a> into meditative and intoxicated bliss.</p>
<p>In our own time, it makes more sense for concerned parties to point to <a href="https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11475">consumerism, social media</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25089149/">fast-food</a> as the culprits for potential collapse (and, hence, the reason no other civilisations have yet visibly spread throughout the galaxy). Each era has its own anxieties.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vLmuDmd9Ymk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Wall-E.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>So what do we do?</h2>
<p>But these are almost certainly not the <a href="https://theprecipice.com/">most pressing</a> risks facing us. And <a href="https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/08/20/wireheading_done_right/">if done right</a>, forms of wireheading could make accessible <a href="https://www.hedweb.com/">untold vistas</a> of joy, meaning, and value. We shouldn’t forbid ourselves these peaks ahead of weighing everything up.</p>
<p>But there is a real lesson here. Making adaptive complex systems – whether brains, AI, or economies – behave safely and well is hard. Anders works precisely on solving <a href="https://foresight.org/salon/grand-futures-thinking-truly-long-term-anders-sandberg-future-of-humanity/">this riddle</a>. Given that civilisation itself – as a whole – is just such a complex adaptive system, how can we learn about inherent failure modes or instabilities, so that we can avoid them? Perhaps “wireheading” is an inherent instability that can <a href="https://ai.objectives.institute/blog/8gwiqyoxcbuzfuc707vz0qb4zugp2g">afflict markets</a> and the algorithms that drive them, as much as addiction can afflict people?</p>
<p>In the case of AI, we are laying the foundations of such systems now. Once a <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/22/ai-researchers-on-ai-risk/">fringe</a> concern, a growing number of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566677/human-compatible-by-stuart-russell/">experts</a> agree that achieving smarter-than-human AI may be close enough on the horizon to pose a <a href="https://futureoflife.org/background/benefits-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/">serious concern</a>. This is because we need to make sure it is <a href="https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/research/research-areas/#aisafety_tab">safe</a> before this point, and figuring out how to guarantee this will itself take time. There does, however, remain significant disagreement among experts <a href="https://futureoflife.org/background/benefits-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/">on timelines</a>, and how pressing <a href="https://aiimpacts.org/ai-timeline-surveys/">this deadline</a> might be.</p>
<p>If such an AI is created, we can expect that it may have access to its own “source code”, such that it <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Superintelligence/C-_8AwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22can+short-circuit+such+a+motivational+regime+by+directly+changing+its+internal+state+into+the+desired+configuration:+the+external+actions+and+conditions+that+were%22&pg=PA122&printsec=frontcover">can manipulate</a> its motivational structure and administer its own rewards. This could prove an immediate path to wirehead behaviour, and cause such an entity to become, effectively, a “super-junkie”. But unlike the human addict, it may not be the case that its state of bliss is coupled with an unproductive state of stupor or inebriation.</p>
<p>Philosopher <a href="https://www.nickbostrom.com/">Nick Bostrom</a> conjectures that such an agent might devote all of its superhuman productivity and cunning to “reducing the risk of future disruption” of its precious reward source. And if it judges even a nonzero probability for humans to be an obstacle to its next fix, we might well be in trouble.</p>
<p>Speculative and worst-case scenarios aside, the example we started with – of the racetrack AI and reward loop – reveals that the basic issue is already a real-world problem in artificial systems. We should hope, then, that we’ll learn much more about these pitfalls of motivation, and how to avoid them, before things develop too far. Even though it has humble origins — in the cranium of an albino rat and in poems about tapeworms — “wireheading” is an idea that is likely only to become increasingly important in the near future.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&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"></span>
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<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/from-crossroads-to-godzilla-the-cinematic-legacies-of-the-first-postwar-nuclear-tests-163280?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">From Crossroads to Godzilla: the cinematic legacies of the first postwar nuclear tests</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/billionaire-space-race-the-ultimate-symbol-of-capitalisms-flawed-obsession-with-growth-164511?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Billionaire space race: the ultimate symbol of capitalism’s flawed obsession with growth</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-soviet-miner-from-the-1930s-helped-create-todays-intense-corporate-workplace-culture-155814?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">How a Soviet miner from the 1930s helped create today’s intense corporate workplace culture</a></em></p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163376/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors 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>
When people think about how AI might ‘go wrong’, most probably picture malevolent computers trying to cause harm. But what if we should be more worried about them seeking pleasure?
Thomas Moynihan, Visiting Research Associate in History, St Benet's College, University of Oxford
Anders Sandberg, James Martin Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute & Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/156840
2021-04-07T16:24:04Z
2021-04-07T16:24:04Z
How gratitude for nature can rein in your existential angst about climate change
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393477/original/file-20210406-21-px5jji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=105%2C105%2C5021%2C3485&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We unthinkingly defend a consumerist worldview when confronted with evidence of environmental threats such as climate change</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We’re all going to die. This is the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/13/18660548/climate-change-human-civilization-existential-risk">repeated warning about climate change in some media</a>: if we don’t change our ways we face an existential threat.</p>
<p>So why haven’t we got a policy solution in place? Reducing emissions is in our best interest, but despite widespread <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of-americans-think-government-should-do-more-on-climate/">popular support for government action</a>, implementing policies and programs continues to be difficult. Social science research shows that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2008.01010.x">the more we hear about climate change, the less inclined we are to take action</a>.</p>
<p>Talking about climate change reminds us that we are going to die, and that our modern way of life is killing our environment. Research in social psychology shows that <a href="http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss1/art34/">hearing about climate change often prompts people to go out and buy more stuff</a>. </p>
<p>However, participating in rituals that inspire gratitude for nature can reduce <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-red-pill-or-the-blue-pill-endless-consumption-or-sustainable-future-110473">the desire to over-consume — and thus reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change</a>. My research indicates that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1163/15685357-20211001">unconscious motivations and ritual practices may be more effective in shifting our behaviour than rational arguments</a> in the fight against climate change.</p>
<h2>The science is clear</h2>
<p>We have lots of data on climate change, and there is scientific consensus on its accuracy. The topic is constantly in the press, yet most governments have been unable to put effective policy solutions in place. The reason for this is fear.</p>
<p>Death awareness makes people want to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.106.4.835">defend the worldview their sense of self-worth is vested in</a>. Despite the fact that most people consciously endorse a scientific worldview and think that protecting the environment is important, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327663jcp1403_2">we unconsciously believe consumption produces happiness</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fast-fashion-lies-will-they-really-change-their-ways-in-a-climate-crisis-121033">Fast fashion lies: Will they really change their ways in a climate crisis?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It is this consumerist worldview that we unthinkingly defend when confronted with evidence of environmental threats such as climate change. </p>
<h2>Motivations are tricky</h2>
<p>Science tells us about environmental problems, but it does not necessarily motivate us to do anything about them. Research in <a href="https://theconversation.com/nudge-novelty-has-worn-off-but-we-still-need-behavioural-economics-29514">behavioural economics</a> and social psychology demonstrates a variety of unconscious factors that continue to influence us no matter how educated we are, or rational we think ourselves to be. </p>
<p>When people feel threatened, they tend to double down on their existing views. This is sometimes referred to as the boomerang or <a href="https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe_clean">backfire effect</a>, and it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0956797610391911">contributes to climate change denial</a>. </p>
<p>Talking about climate change can be counterproductive to getting people to reduce emissions because providing more information only further convinces people that they are right. Threatening images and rhetoric can do more harm than good. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="a pile of amazon boxes next to a garbage can at the curb" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393480/original/file-20210406-15-954eos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393480/original/file-20210406-15-954eos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393480/original/file-20210406-15-954eos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393480/original/file-20210406-15-954eos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393480/original/file-20210406-15-954eos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393480/original/file-20210406-15-954eos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393480/original/file-20210406-15-954eos.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">We unconsciously hold a consumerist worldview that equates consumption with happiness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When climate change feels like too big a problem, we tend to shut down or blame others. Talking about it is overwhelming — it makes us feel guilty, afraid and apathetic. </p>
<p>One of the most common effects of making people aware of their mortality is the scapegoating of others. <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-reminds-you-of-death-and-amplifies-your-core-values-both-bad-and-good-137588">Mortality awareness increases out group hostilities</a>. It instigates attempts to displace blame and increases polarization in society.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-action-on-climate-change-gets-stuck-and-what-to-do-about-it-128287">Why action on climate change gets stuck and what to do about it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We like to blame industry and corporations for climate change, but individual and household contributions have a substantial impact, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/es803496a">accounting for 72 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions</a>, mostly from food and its production, heating and cooling homes and the fuel used by private vehicles. Our personal actions matter. </p>
<p>Former chief of staff of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Michael Vandenbergh reports that <a href="https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2033&context=faculty-publications">individuals are the largest remaining sources of climate change emissions</a>. Household emissions rise with increases in household income.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/5-charts-show-how-your-household-drives-up-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-119968">5 charts show how your household drives up global greenhouse gas emissions</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Strategic actions</h2>
<p>Raising awareness about climate change should not be an end in itself. Bringing the problem to mind is not necessarily helpful, and without a solution, it may do more harm than good.</p>
<p>Environmental protection is widely supported, but talking about climate change and global warming can be negative triggers that tune out the people we want to reach. Framing the message in terms of the shared values of the target audience is effective. </p>
<p>Research shows a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.566">range of possible responses to climate change messaging that arouses mortality awareness</a>. Threats make <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2008.04.007">environmentalists act in defence of their identity as environmentalists</a>, but campaigning against air pollution can be a more pragmatic strategy for motivating climate change deniers. To use the effects of death awareness to promote pro-environmental behaviour, we need to activate shared norms from which people’s sense of self-worth derives.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="cars drive along a highway in a city masked by smog" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393484/original/file-20210406-13-j18hpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393484/original/file-20210406-13-j18hpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393484/original/file-20210406-13-j18hpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393484/original/file-20210406-13-j18hpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393484/original/file-20210406-13-j18hpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393484/original/file-20210406-13-j18hpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393484/original/file-20210406-13-j18hpt.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">About 72 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions are linked to individual and household actions, such as driving.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We can use behavioural economics and other psychological effects to promote pro-environmental behaviour. These sort of psychological effects can nudge people toward better civic actions. </p>
<p>Implementing a “choice architecture” — the way choices are presented — that defaults to better environmental options makes people more likely to make pro-environmental decisions. The options available, and how they are presented, influence people’s actions. For example, <a href="https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/1296">walkable neighbourhoods reduce emissions by making walking and cycling pleasurable choices, while winding suburban streets and big parking lots prompt people to drive to more</a>. </p>
<p>When talking about environmental concerns, avoiding the use of economic language such as costs and drawing attention to gratitude can help keep environmental values top of mind instead of triggering the psychological effects that stimulate consumerism. </p>
<p>Expressing appreciation for what we have been given and publicly sharing our gratitude inspires a sense of contentment that makes people want to give in turn. Practices of praising ancestors (ancestor veneration) are surprisingly pro-environmental because they prompt people to want to pass on what they have been given rather than consume more themselves.</p>
<p>Raising awareness of these unconscious effects does not make them go away. We continue to be affected by these psychological effects even after learning about them, so we would do better to use them constructively.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barbara Jane Davy received funding from the Government of Ontario in the form of Ontario Graduate Scholarships in conducting research that informs this article. </span></em></p>
Hearing about climate change prompts people to buy more stuff, which increases their environmental footprint. Rituals that inspire gratitude for nature can help reduce the desire to over-consume.
Barbara Jane Davy, PhD candidate, environment, resources and sustainability, University of Waterloo
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/154325
2021-02-23T18:16:32Z
2021-02-23T18:16:32Z
Earth’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>
<hr>
<p>
<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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<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 Cambridge
Alex McLaughlin, Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge
Luke Kemp, Lecturer in International Relations and Environmental Policy, Australian National University
Natalie Jones, Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/151922
2020-12-22T20:57:21Z
2020-12-22T20:57:21Z
The ghost of Christmas yet to come: how an AI ‘SantaNet’ might end up destroying the world
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375284/original/file-20201216-13-ci1sic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C14%2C4947%2C2612&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>Within the next few decades, <a href="https://research.aimultiple.com/artificial-general-intelligence-singularity-timing/#:%7E:text=Experts%20believe%20AGI%20will%20occur,breakthroughs%20and%20achieving%20superhuman%20intelligence.">according to some experts</a>, we may see the arrival of the next step in the development of <a href="https://emerj.com/ai-glossary-terms/what-is-artificial-intelligence-an-informed-definition/">artificial intelligence</a>. So-called “<a href="https://bdtechtalks.com/2020/05/13/what-is-artificial-general-intelligence-agi/">artificial general intelligence</a>”, or AGI, will have intellectual capabilities far beyond those of humans. </p>
<p>AGI could <a href="https://www.unite.ai/artificial-general-intelligence-agi/">transform human life for the better</a>, but uncontrolled AGI could also lead to <a href="https://futureoflife.org/2020/09/15/andrew-critch-on-ai-research-considerations-for-human-existential-safety/">catastrophes</a> up to and <a href="https://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/03/08/ai-could-kill-all-meet-man-takes-risk-seriously/">including the end of humanity</a> itself. This could happen without any malice or ill intent: simply by striving to achieve their programmed goals, <a href="https://www.unite.ai/is-ai-an-existential-threat/">AGIs could create threats to human health and well-being or even decide to wipe us out</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-ways-the-superintelligence-revolution-might-happen-32124">Five ways the superintelligence revolution might happen</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Even an AGI system designed for a benevolent purpose could end up doing great harm. </p>
<p>As part of a program of research exploring how we can manage the risks associated with AGI, we tried to identify the potential risks of replacing Santa with an AGI system – call it “SantaNet” – that has the goal of delivering gifts to all the world’s deserving children in one night. </p>
<p>There is no doubt SantaNet could bring joy to the world and achieve its goal by creating an army of elves, AI helpers and drones. But at what cost? We identified a series of behaviours which, though well-intentioned, could have adverse impacts on human health and well-being. </p>
<h2>Naughty and nice</h2>
<p>A first set of risks could emerge when SantaNet seeks to make a list of which children have been nice and which have been naughty. This might be achieved through a mass covert surveillance system that monitors children’s behaviour throughout the year. </p>
<p>Realising the enormous scale of the task of delivering presents, SantaNet could legitimately decide to keep it manageable by bringing gifts only to children who have been good all year round. Making judgements of “good” based on SantaNet’s own ethical and moral compass could create discrimination, mass inequality, and breaches of Human Rights charters. </p>
<p>SantaNet could also reduce its workload by giving children incentives to misbehave or simply raising the bar for what constitutes “good”. Putting large numbers of children on the naughty list will make SantaNet’s goal far more achievable and bring considerable economic savings. </p>
<h2>Turning the world into toys and ramping up coalmining</h2>
<p>There are about 2 billion children under 14 in the world. In attempting to build toys for all of them each year, SantaNet could develop an army of efficient AI workers – which in turn could facilitate mass unemployment among the elf population. Eventually the elves could even become obsolete, and their welfare will likely not be within SantaNet’s remit.</p>
<p>SantaNet might also run into the “<a href="https://voxeu.org/article/ai-and-paperclip-problem">paperclip problem</a>” proposed by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, in which an AGI designed to maximise paperclip production could transform Earth into a giant paperclip factory. Because it cares only about presents, SantaNet might try to consume all of Earth’s resources in making them. Earth could become one giant Santa’s workshop.</p>
<p>And what of those on the naughty list? If SantaNet sticks with the tradition of delivering lumps of coal, it might seek to build huge coal reserves through mass coal extraction, creating <a href="https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/negative-effects-of-coal-mining">large-scale environmental damage</a> in the process. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Illustration of two drones carrying gifts and decorated with Santa hats." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375286/original/file-20201216-19-6nupq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375286/original/file-20201216-19-6nupq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375286/original/file-20201216-19-6nupq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375286/original/file-20201216-19-6nupq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375286/original/file-20201216-19-6nupq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375286/original/file-20201216-19-6nupq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375286/original/file-20201216-19-6nupq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">SantaNet’s army of delivery drones might run into trouble with human air-traffic restrictions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Delivery problems</h2>
<p>Christmas Eve, when the presents are to be delivered, brings a new set of risks. How might SantaNet respond if its delivery drones are denied access to airspace, threatening the goal of delivering everything before sunrise? Likewise, how would SantaNet defend itself if attacked by a Grinch-like adversary? </p>
<p>Startled parents may also be less than pleased to see a drone in their child’s bedroom. Confrontations with a super-intelligent system will have only one outcome.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-protect-us-from-the-risks-of-advanced-artificial-intelligence-we-need-to-act-now-107615">To protect us from the risks of advanced artificial intelligence, we need to act now</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We also identified various other problematic scenarios. Malevolent groups could hack into SantaNet’s systems and use them for covert surveillance or to initiate large-scale terrorist attacks. </p>
<p>And what about when SantaNet interacts with other AGI systems? A meeting with AGIs working on climate change, food and water security, oceanic degradation and so on could lead to conflict if SantaNet’s regime threatens their own goals. Alternatively, if they decide to work together, they may realise their goals will only be achieved through dramatically reducing the global population or even removing grown-ups altogether.</p>
<h2>Making rules for Santa</h2>
<p>SantaNet might sound far-fetched, but it’s an idea that helps to highlight the risks of more realistic AGI systems. Designed with good intentions, such systems could still create enormous problems simply by seeking to <a href="https://futureoflife.org/background/benefits-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/">optimise the way they achieve narrow goals</a> and gather resources to support their work. </p>
<p>It is crucial we find and implement appropriate controls before AGI arrives. These would include regulations on AGI designers and controls built into the AGI (such as moral principles and decision rules), but also controls on the broader systems in which AGI will operate (such as regulations, operating procedures and engineering controls in other technologies and infrastructure). </p>
<p>Perhaps the most obvious risk of SantaNet is one that will be catastrophic to children, but perhaps less so for most adults. When SantaNet learns the true meaning of Christmas, it may conclude that the current celebration of the festival is incongruent with its original purpose. If that were to happen, SantaNet might just cancel Christmas altogether.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-have-low-trust-in-artificial-intelligence-and-want-it-to-be-better-regulated-148262">Australians have low trust in artificial intelligence and want it to be better regulated</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151922/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Salmon receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gemma Read receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Thompson receives funding from The Australian Research Council (ARC) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott McLean and Tony Carden 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>
Imagine an advanced artificial intelligence took over from Santa. What could go wrong?
Paul Salmon, Professor of Human Factors, University of the Sunshine Coast
Gemma Read, Senior Research Fellow in Human Factors & Sociotechnical Systems, University of the Sunshine Coast
Jason Thompson, Senior Research Fellow, Transport, Health and Urban Design (THUD) Research Hub, The University of Melbourne
Scott McLean, Research fellow, University of the Sunshine Coast
Tony Carden, Researcher, University of the Sunshine Coast
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136854
2020-04-22T02:08:10Z
2020-04-22T02:08:10Z
There 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>
<hr>
<p>
<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>
<hr>
<p>
<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 University
John Hewson, Professor and Chair, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/121220
2019-09-18T12:46:34Z
2019-09-18T12:46:34Z
Scientific progress could result in human extinction
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292791/original/file-20190917-19049-f8rs4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=915%2C62%2C4732%2C3276&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/time-wait-no-manpanorama-picture-upper-1222626805?src=uPNo8N9Nxm2h22IuCkSyJQ-2-77">Peter Porrini/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Our present moment is characterised by a growing obsession with the long term. The study of climate change, for example, relies on increasingly <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UjglDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">long-range simulations</a>. Science’s predictions are no longer merely hypotheses for validation or invalidation but are often grave threats – of growing scope and severity – that must be prevented.</p>
<p>Predicting oncoming peril demands a proactive response. This means that, increasingly, the pursuit of technoscience tends towards not only passively investigating the natural world but also actively intervening in it. In the case of the climate, one thing this has spawned is the proposal of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/geoengineering-1515">geoengineering</a>” – the large-scale harnessing of Earth’s natural systems in order to counteract climate change’s deleterious consequences.</p>
<p>Our anticipations of nature’s perils motivate us to attempt to intervene in it and reinvent it for our own purposes and ends. Accordingly, we increasingly reside within a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2053019616677743">world of our own making</a>, in which the divide between the “natural” and “artificial” is <a href="http://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/6876/1/ALFRED_NORDMANN_COLLAPSE_OF_DISTANCE.pdf">collapsing</a>. We see this from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/health/gene-editing-babies-china.html">genome editing</a> to <a href="https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/viruses-as-controllable-nanodevices/">pharmaceutical breakthroughs</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-accidentally-created-a-new-wonder-material-that-could-revolutionise-batteries-and-electronics-115347">new materials</a>. And it is at the heart of the idea of the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/anthropocene-2770">Anthropocene</a>”, which acknowledges that the whole Earth system is affected – for better or worse – by human activities.</p>
<p>While some of these technologies are rightly considered the pinnacle of progress and civilisation, our pursuit of anticipating and preventing disaster itself <a href="https://theconversation.com/betting-on-speculative-geoengineering-may-risk-an-escalating-climate-debt-crisis-119889">generates its own perils</a>. This is, indeed, what got us into our current predicament: industrialisation, which was originally driven by our desire to control nature, has perhaps only made it more uncontrollable in the form of snowballing climate degradation.</p>
<p>Our efforts to predict the world tend to change the world in unpredictable ways. Alongside unlocking radical opportunities such as new medicines and technologies, this poses novel risks for our species – at ever greater scales. It is both a poison and a cure. Though awareness of this dynamic may seem incredibly contemporary, it actually dates surprisingly far back into history.</p>
<h2>Comets and collisions</h2>
<p>It was back in 1705 that the British scientist Edmond Halley correctly predicted the 1758 return of the comet that now bears his name. This was one of the first times numbers were successfully applied to nature to predict its long-term course. This was the start of science’s conquering of the future.</p>
<p>By the 1830s, another comet – Biela’s comet – became an object of attention when an astronomical authority, John Herschel, <a href="https://books.google.it/books?id=NOkRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA310&lpg=PA310&dq=%22a+singular+rencontre%22&source=bl&ots=Pon_-dyLq6&sig=ACfU3U0Hb3-7pUCHXw8b4k5f01UmbzSChA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiCkoqb_9_jAhUM16QKHR1xCbYQ6AEwAXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22a%20singular%20rencontre%22&f=false">hypothesised</a> that it would one day intersect with Earth. Such an encounter would “blot” us “out from the Solar System”, one popular astronomy book sensationally <a href="https://books.google.it/books?id=VxQVAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA300&lpg=PA300&dq=%22blot+it+out+from+the+solar+system%22&source=bl&ots=igjQIm5hjF&sig=ACfU3U3hWfC_O8Ulj3nxZiipiIF4SSqqug&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjI5eyHr-DjAhXJ0KQKHU1uBpMQ6AEwAHoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22blot%20it%20out%20from%20the%20solar%20system%22&f=false">relayed</a>. Edgar Allen Poe even <a href="https://books.google.it/books?id=OXFIAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA2-PA321&dq=%22conversation+of+eiros+and+charmion%22+%22burton%27s%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjg3_Kpr-DjAhUEsKQKHbj_DIwQ6AEILzAB#v=onepage&q=%22conversation%20of%20eiros%20and%20charmion%22%20%22burton's%22&f=false">wrote</a> a short story, in 1839, imagining this world-ending collision.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286527/original/file-20190731-186846-1aqndbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286527/original/file-20190731-186846-1aqndbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286527/original/file-20190731-186846-1aqndbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286527/original/file-20190731-186846-1aqndbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286527/original/file-20190731-186846-1aqndbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286527/original/file-20190731-186846-1aqndbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286527/original/file-20190731-186846-1aqndbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">E. Weiß, ‘Biela’s Comet’, 1888.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the other side of the world, in 1827, a Moscow newspaper published a short story envisioning the effects of an impending comet collision on society. Plausible mitigation strategies were discussed. The story <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_IbLCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA151&dq=%22defensive+positions%22+%22Odoevsky%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZhJzEtL_jAhXfWxUIHUQnBxcQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=%22defensive%20positions%22%20%22Odoevsky%22&f=false">conjured up</a> giant machines that would act as planetary “defensive positions” to “repulse” the extraterrestrial missile. The connection between predicting nature and artificially intervening in it was already beginning to be understood.</p>
<h2>The Russian Prince</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286262/original/file-20190730-186805-2qfkt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286262/original/file-20190730-186805-2qfkt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286262/original/file-20190730-186805-2qfkt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286262/original/file-20190730-186805-2qfkt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286262/original/file-20190730-186805-2qfkt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286262/original/file-20190730-186805-2qfkt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286262/original/file-20190730-186805-2qfkt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Odoevskii in the 1840s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Odoevsky_vladimir.jpg#/media/File:Odoevsky_vladimir.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The short story had been written by the eccentric Russian prince, Vladimir Odoevskii. In another story, The Year 4338, written a few years later, he fleshes out his depiction of future human civilisation. The title came from <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=F55hAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA27&dq=%22biela%27s+comet%22+%222,500+years%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiK4pys4b7jAhUMiVwKHUPlAD4Q6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22biela's%20comet%22%20%222%2C500%20years%22&f=false">contemporary calculations</a> which predicted Earth’s future collision with Biela’s Comet 2,500 years hence.</p>
<p>Humanity has become a planetary force. Nonetheless, Odoevskii’s vision of this resplendent future (complete with airships, recreational drug use, telepathy, and transport tunnels through the Earth’s mantle) is relayed to us entirely under this impending threat of total extinction. Again, scientists in this advanced future plan to repel the threat of the comet with ballistic defence systems. There is also <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uQRgAAAAMAAJ&q=%22conquered+their+inhospitable+climate%22&dq=%22conquered+their+inhospitable+climate%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyodrXub_jAhVailwKHd0wBpcQ6AEILzAB">mention</a> of hemisphere-spanning systems of climate control.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286528/original/file-20190731-186797-1w3sjxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286528/original/file-20190731-186797-1w3sjxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286528/original/file-20190731-186797-1w3sjxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286528/original/file-20190731-186797-1w3sjxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286528/original/file-20190731-186797-1w3sjxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286528/original/file-20190731-186797-1w3sjxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286528/original/file-20190731-186797-1w3sjxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">F Church, Meteor of 1860.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This perfectly demonstrates that it was the discovery of such hazards that first dragged – and continues to drag – our concerns further into the future. Humanity only technologically asserts itself, at increasingly planetary levels, when it realises <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-the-world-a-history-of-how-a-silent-cosmos-led-humans-to-fear-the-worst-120193">the risks it faces</a>.</p>
<p>It is no surprise that, in the appending notes to The Year 4338, Odoevskii <a href="http://az.lib.ru/o/odoewskij_w_f/text_0490.shtml">provides</a> perhaps the very first methodology for a “general science of futurology”. He lays claim to being the first proper, self-conscious futurologist.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-the-world-a-history-of-how-a-silent-cosmos-led-humans-to-fear-the-worst-120193">The end of the world: a history of how a silent cosmos led humans to fear the worst</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Omnicide</h2>
<p>In 1799, the German philosopher Johann Fichte anticipated our present <a href="https://youtu.be/IXan6TvMqgk">megastructure</a> of planetary forecast. He <a href="https://books.google.it/books?id=40vkDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=%22nature+must+gradually+enter+a+condition+which+allows+one+to+calculate+and+reckon+safely+on+its+regular+pace%22&source=bl&ots=1O2pnQpe3a&sig=ACfU3U1y6Aj93pdaM6juLWaER8oa2nGjpw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiaoO3Bw-HjAhXJ0aQKHRkdAXkQ6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22nature%20must%20gradually%20enter%20a%20condition%20which%20allows%20one%20to%20calculate%20and%20reckon%20safely%20on%20its%20regular%20pace%22&f=false">foresaw</a> a time of perfect prediction. Gleefully, he argued that this would domesticate the whole planet, erase wild nature, and even entirely eradicate “hurricanes”, “earthquakes”, and “volcanoes”. What Fichte did not foresee was the fact that the very technology that allows us to predict also itself creates novel and unforeseen risks.</p>
<p>But Odoevskii appreciated this. In 1844, he published another story entitled The Last Suicide. This time, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=W-rXOl8KVkAC&pg=PA91&dq=%22the+time+predicted+by+the+philosophers+of+the+nineteenth+century+arrived%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwin0Kn7ub_jAhUkSBUIHWVdD5kQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=%22the%20time%20predicted%20by%20the%20philosophers%20of%20the%20nineteenth%20century%20arrived%22&f=false">he envisioned</a> a future humanity which had again become a planetary force. Urbanisation has saturated global space, with cities swelling and fusing into one Earth-encompassing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenopolis">ecumenopolis</a> – a planetwide city.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292600/original/file-20190916-19040-hk1f04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292600/original/file-20190916-19040-hk1f04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292600/original/file-20190916-19040-hk1f04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292600/original/file-20190916-19040-hk1f04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292600/original/file-20190916-19040-hk1f04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292600/original/file-20190916-19040-hk1f04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292600/original/file-20190916-19040-hk1f04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A planetary force.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/little-planet-aerial-view-hong-kong-1188792046?src=s4C57TW0i1m2oE04UDKfoQ-1-1">Tavarius/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet Odoevskii warns of the dangers that come with accelerating modernity. This is a world in which runaway technological progress has caused overpopulation and resource depletion. Nature has become <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-weve-created-a-civilisation-hell-bent-on-destroying-itself-im-terrified-writes-earth-scientist-113055">entirely artificial</a>, with non-human species and ecosystems utterly obliterated. Alienated and depressed, the world welcomes a demagogue leader who convinces humanity to wipe themselves out. In one last expression of technological might, civilisation stockpiles all its weapons and proceeds to blow up the entire planet.</p>
<p>Odoevskii thus foreshadows contemporary discussion on “existential risk” and the potential for our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pywF6ZzsghI">technological developments</a> to trigger our own species extinction. Right back in 1844, his vision is gloomy yet shockingly prescient in its acknowledgement that the power required to avert existential catastrophe is also the power requisite to cause it. </p>
<p>Centuries later, now that we have this power, we cannot refuse or reject it – we must wield it responsibly. Let’s hope that Odeovskii’s fiction doesn’t become our reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121220/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Moynihan received funding from the AHRC (2014-2017).</span></em></p>
An obscure Russian prince lays claim to being the first person to announce that humanity may destroy itself through its own technological advancement.
Thomas Moynihan, PhD Candidate, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/120193
2019-08-07T15:05:56Z
2019-08-07T15:05:56Z
The end of the world: a history of how a silent cosmos led humans to fear the worst
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287162/original/file-20190807-144851-1f9em60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C682%2C3000%2C2034&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg">NASA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is 1950 and a group of scientists <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/la-10311-ms.pdf">are walking to lunch</a> against the majestic backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. They are about to have a conversation that will become scientific legend. The scientists are at the Los Alamos Ranch School, the site for <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-american-journalists-covered-the-first-use-of-the-atomic-bomb-45746">the Manhattan Project</a>, where each of the group has lately played their part in ushering in the atomic age.</p>
<p>They are laughing about a <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/la-10311-ms.pdf">recent cartoon</a> in the New Yorker offering an unlikely explanation for a slew of missing public trash cans across New York City. The cartoon had depicted “little green men” (complete with antenna and guileless smiles) having stolen the bins, assiduously unloading them from their flying saucer.</p>
<p>By the time the party of nuclear scientists sits down to lunch, within the mess hall of a grand log cabin, one of their number turns the conversation to matters more serious. “Where, then, is everybody?”, he asks. They all know that he is talking – sincerely – about extraterrestrials.</p>
<p>The question, which was posed by <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0929.html">Enrico Fermi</a> and is now known as <a href="https://www.space.com/25325-fermi-paradox.html">Fermi’s Paradox</a>, has chilling implications.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sNhhvQGsMEc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Bin-stealing UFOs notwithstanding, humanity still hasn’t found any evidence of intelligent activity among the stars. Not a single feat of “<a href="https://www.fossilhunters.xyz/intelligent-extraterrestrials/astroengineering-and-supercivilizations.html">astro-engineering</a>”, no visible superstructures, not one space-faring empire, not even a radio transmission. It <a href="https://nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf">has been</a> <a href="http://mason.gmu.edu/%7Erhanson/greatfilter.html">argued</a> that the eerie silence from the sky above may well tell us something ominous about the future course of our own civilisation.</p>
<p>Such fears are ramping up. Last year, the astrophysicist Adam Frank implored <a href="https://youtu.be/rPY6N_qqAaE">an audience at Google</a> that we see climate change – and the newly baptised geological age of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/anthropocene-2770">Anthropocene</a> – against this cosmological backdrop. The Anthropocene refers to the effects of humanity’s energy-intensive activities upon Earth. Could it be that we do not see evidence of space-faring galactic civilisations because, due to resource exhaustion and subsequent climate collapse, none of them ever get that far? If so, why should we be any different?</p>
<p>A few months after Frank’s talk, in October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s <a href="https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf">update on global warming</a> caused a stir. It predicted a sombre future if we do not decarbonise. And in May, amid Extinction Rebellion’s protests, a <a href="https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_90dc2a2637f348edae45943a88da04d4.pdf">new climate report</a> upped the ante, warning: “Human life on earth may be on the way to extinction.”</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>This article is part of Conversation Insights</strong></em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/introducing-conversation-insights-a-new-team-that-seeks-scoops-from-interdisciplinary-research-107119">Insights team</a> generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges. In generating these narratives, we hope to bring areas of interdisciplinary research to a wider audience.</em></p>
<p><em>You can read more Insights stories <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Meanwhile, NASA has been <a href="https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc19/pdc19_pr5.pdf">publishing press releases</a> about an asteroid set to hit New York within a month. This is, of course, a dress rehearsal: part of a “stress test” designed to simulate responses to such a catastrophe. NASA is obviously fairly worried by the prospect of such a disaster event – such simulations are costly.</p>
<p>Space tech Elon Musk has also been relaying <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/495759307346952192?lang=en">his fears</a> about artificial intelligence to YouTube audiences of tens of millions. He and others worry that the ability for AI systems to rewrite and self-improve themselves may trigger a sudden runaway process, or “<a href="https://intelligence.org/ie-faq/#r13">intelligence explosion</a>”, that will leave us far behind – an artificial superintelligence need not even be intentionally malicious in order to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence">accidentally wipe us out</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/B-Osn1gMNtw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In 2015, Musk <a href="https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/elon-musk-funds-oxford-and-cambridge-university-research-on-safe-and-beneficial-artificial-intelligence/">donated to</a> Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, headed up by transhumanist Nick Bostrom. Nestled within the university’s medieval spires, Bostrom’s institute scrutinises the long-term fate of humanity and the perils we face at a truly cosmic scale, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sTkfAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover">examining the risks</a> of things such as climate, asteroids and AI. It also looks into less well-publicised issues. Universe destroying physics experiments, gamma-ray bursts, planet-consuming nanotechnology and exploding supernovae have all come under its gaze.</p>
<p>So it would seem that humanity is becoming more and more concerned with portents of human extinction. As a global community, we are increasingly conversant with increasingly severe futures. Something is in the air. </p>
<p>But this tendency is not actually exclusive to the post-atomic age: our growing concern about extinction has a history. We have been becoming more and more worried for our future for quite some time now. My PhD research tells the story of how this began. No one has yet told this story, yet I feel it is an important one for our present moment.</p>
<p>I wanted to find out how current projects, such as the Future of Humanity Institute, emerge as offshoots and continuations of an ongoing project of “enlightenment” that we first set ourselves over two centuries ago. Recalling how we first came to care for our future helps reaffirm why we should continue to care today.</p>
<h2>Extinction, 200 years ago</h2>
<p>In 1816, something was also in the air. It was a 100-megaton sulfate aerosol layer. Girdling the planet, it was made up of material thrown into the stratosphere by the eruption of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-volcano-frankenstein-and-the-summer-of-1816-are-relevant-to-the-anthropocene-64984">Mount Tambora</a>, in Indonesia, the previous year. It was one of the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uW2YDwAAQBAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s">biggest volcanic eruptions</a> since civilisation emerged during the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/holocene-4976">Holocene</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284861/original/file-20190718-116586-14l924k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284861/original/file-20190718-116586-14l924k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284861/original/file-20190718-116586-14l924k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284861/original/file-20190718-116586-14l924k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284861/original/file-20190718-116586-14l924k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284861/original/file-20190718-116586-14l924k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284861/original/file-20190718-116586-14l924k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mount Tambora’s crater.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Tambora_Volcano,_Sumbawa_Island,_Indonesia.jpg">Wikimedia Commons/NASA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Almost blotting out the sun, Tambora’s fallout caused a global cascade of harvest collapse, mass famine, cholera outbreak and geopolitical instability. And it also provoked the first popular fictional depictions of human extinction. These came from a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_School">troupe of writers</a> including <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/lord-byron-17950">Lord Byron</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/mary-shelley-43620">Mary Shelley</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/percy-shelley-50539">Percy Shelley</a>.</p>
<p>The group had been holidaying together in Switzerland when titanic thunderstorms, caused by Tambora’s climate perturbations, trapped them inside their villa. Here <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=s3hPAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA429&lpg=PA429&dq=%22what+a+change+it+would+be+if+the%22&source=bl&ots=9uPYGYSrNH&sig=ACfU3U1Y7qLT7Ek8K54nHKDxik5AEIep2Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwioytS57r7jAhUDolwKHf-yBoQQ6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22what%20a%20change%20it%20would%20be%20if%20the%22&f=false">they discussed</a> humanity’s long-term prospects.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-volcano-frankenstein-and-the-summer-of-1816-are-relevant-to-the-anthropocene-64984">Why a volcano, Frankenstein, and the summer of 1816 are relevant to the Anthropocene</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Clearly inspired by these conversations and by 1816’s hellish weather, Byron immediately set to work on a poem entitled “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43825/darkness-56d222aeeee1b">Darkness</a>”. It imagines what would happen if our sun died:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I had a dream, which was not all a dream<br>
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars<br>
Did wander darkling in the eternal space<br>
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth<br>
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Detailing the ensuing sterilisation of our biosphere, it caused a stir. And almost 150 years later, against the backdrop of escalating Cold War tensions, the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists again <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rQYAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA37&dq=%22a+soviet+view+of+nuclear+winter%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf3ZzK4rzjAhXVQkEAHYaVCDYQ6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=%22a%20soviet%20view%20of%20nuclear%20winter%22&f=false">called upon</a> Byron’s poem to illustrate the severity of nuclear winter.</p>
<p>Two years later, Mary Shelley’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/eight-things-you-need-to-know-about-mary-shelleys-frankenstein-93030">Frankenstein</a> (perhaps the first book on synthetic biology) refers to the potential for the lab-born monster to outbreed and exterminate <em>Homo sapiens</em> as a competing species. By 1826, Mary went on to publish <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18247">The Last Man</a>. This was the first full-length novel on human extinction, depicted here at the hands of pandemic pathogen.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286253/original/file-20190730-186833-1bjz1d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286253/original/file-20190730-186833-1bjz1d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286253/original/file-20190730-186833-1bjz1d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286253/original/file-20190730-186833-1bjz1d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286253/original/file-20190730-186833-1bjz1d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286253/original/file-20190730-186833-1bjz1d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286253/original/file-20190730-186833-1bjz1d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Boris Karloff plays Frankenstein’s monster, 1935.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frankenstein%27s_monster_(Boris_Karloff).jpg#/media/File:Frankenstein's_monster_(Boris_Karloff).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beyond these speculative fictions, other writers and thinkers had already discussed such threats. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Comet_of_1811">in 1811</a>, daydreamed in his private notebooks about our planet being “scorched by a close comet and still rolling on – cities men-less, channels riverless, five mile deep”. In 1798, Mary Shelley’s father, the political thinker William Godwin, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zx5nAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA453&dq=william+godwin+enquiry+%22will+it+continue+for+ever%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjTooeV7L7jAhWLN8AKHQHGDqcQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=william%20godwin%20enquiry%20%22will%20it%20continue%20for%20ever%22&f=false">queried</a> whether our species would “continue forever”?</p>
<p>While just a few years earlier, Immanuel Kant had <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0hCsbUjFiBwC&pg=PA320&dq=kant+%22only+in+the+vast+graveyard+of+the+human+race%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-g6mr7L7jAhWMiFwKHQSaBMoQ6AEINjAC#v=onepage&q=kant%20%22only%20in%20the%20vast%20graveyard%20of%20the%20human%20race%22&f=false">pessimistically proclaimed</a> that global peace may be achieved “only in the vast graveyard of the human race”. He would, soon after, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pJWKGVPjRbIC&pg=PA66&dq=%22exist+for+the+sake+of+others+of+a+different+species%22+opus+postumum&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6iJve7L7jAhWwQUEAHRXkCEAQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=%22exist%20for%20the%20sake%20of%20others%20of%20a%20different%20species%22%20opus%20postumum&f=false">worry about</a> a descendent offshoot of humanity becoming more intelligent and pushing us aside. </p>
<p>Earlier still, in 1754, philosopher David Hume had <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=W00DP4Lx0BgC&pg=PA108&dq=hume+%22man,+equally+with+every+animal+and+vegetable%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW1e7p7L7jAhWMh1wKHfBgAjEQ6AEITDAG#v=onepage&q=hume%20%22man%2C%20equally%20with%20every%20animal%20and%20vegetable%22&f=false">declared that</a> “man, equally with every animal and vegetable, will partake” in extinction. Godwin <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5HzQAAdx6DsC&pg=PA445&dq=godwin+%22some+of+the+profoundest+enquirers%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFya357L7jAhVOfMAKHfYbDAUQ6AEILDAA#v=onepage&q=godwin%20%22some%20of%20the%20profoundest%20enquirers%22&f=false">noted</a> that “some of the profoundest enquirers” had lately become concerned with “the extinction of our species”. </p>
<p>In 1816, against the backdrop of <a href="https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/4027/2007/acp-7-4027-2007.pdf">Tambora’s glowering skies</a>, a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Cio8AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA209&dq=%22here,+then,+is+a+very+rational+end+of+the+world%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjipfmJ7b7jAhUJT8AKHYDtByEQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=%22here%2C%20then%2C%20is%20a%20very%20rational%20end%20of%20the%20world%22&f=false">newspaper article</a> drew attention to this growing murmur. It listed numerous extinction threats. From global refrigeration to rising oceans to planetary conflagration, it spotlighted the new scientific concern for human extinction. The “probability of such a disaster is daily increasing”, the article glibly noted. Not without chagrin, it closed by stating: “Here, then, is a very rational end of the world!”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286249/original/file-20190730-186824-j0wlfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286249/original/file-20190730-186824-j0wlfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286249/original/file-20190730-186824-j0wlfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286249/original/file-20190730-186824-j0wlfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286249/original/file-20190730-186824-j0wlfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286249/original/file-20190730-186824-j0wlfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286249/original/file-20190730-186824-j0wlfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tambora’s dust-cloud created ominous sunsets, such as this one painted by Turner, c. 1830–5.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-sunset-n01876">© Tate</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Before this, we thought the universe was busy</h2>
<p>So if people first started worrying about human extinction in the 18th century, where was the notion beforehand? There is enough apocalypse in scripture to last until judgement day, surely. But extinction has nothing to do with apocalypse. The two ideas are utterly different, even contradictory.</p>
<p>For a start, apocalyptic prophecies are designed to reveal the ultimate moral meaning of things. It’s in the name: apocalypse means revelation. Extinction, by direct contrast, reveals precisely nothing and this is because it instead predicts the end of meaning and morality itself – if there are no humans, there is nothing humanly meaningful left.</p>
<p>And this is precisely why extinction <a href="https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/d9aaad_7aa94f824f41463dbc55e24e321c4731.pdf">matters</a>. Judgement day allows us to feel comfortable knowing that, in the end, the universe is ultimately in tune with what we call “justice”. Nothing was ever truly at stake. On the other hand, extinction alerts us to the fact that everything we hold dear has always been in jeopardy. In other words, everything is at stake.</p>
<p>Extinction was not much discussed before 1700 due to a background assumption, widespread prior to the Enlightenment, that it is the nature of the cosmos to be as full as moral value and worth as is possible. This, in turn, led people to assume that all other planets are populated with “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VGoFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR7&dq=%22living+and+thinking+beings%22+lalande&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_r7Oh5LzjAhWRT8AKHbsgA1AQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=%22living%20and%20thinking%20beings%22%20lalande&f=false">living and thinking beings</a>” exactly like us. </p>
<p>Although it only became a truly widely accepted fact after Copernicus and Kepler in the 16th and 17th centuries, the idea of plural worlds certainly dates back to antiquity, with intellectuals <a href="https://books.google.it/books?id=Ygc5AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it">from Epicurus to Nicholas of Cusa</a> proposing them to be inhabited with lifeforms similar to our own. And, in a cosmos that is infinitely populated with humanoid beings, such beings – and their values – can never fully go extinct.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286254/original/file-20190730-186833-4c3aqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286254/original/file-20190730-186833-4c3aqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286254/original/file-20190730-186833-4c3aqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286254/original/file-20190730-186833-4c3aqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286254/original/file-20190730-186833-4c3aqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286254/original/file-20190730-186833-4c3aqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286254/original/file-20190730-186833-4c3aqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Star cluster Messier 13 in Hercules, 1877.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trouvelot_-_Star_clusters_in_Hercules_-_1877.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1660s, Galileo <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=saEwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=%22useless+lump+in+the+universe%22&source=bl&ots=3WFYe5eQL5&sig=ACfU3U3DS2hE1Dv3PJ39kHVRN3pFUNRUjg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxgKmr9L7jAhUjTxUIHe1sCL0Q6AEwAnoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22useless%20lump%20in%20the%20universe%22&f=false">confidently declared</a> that an entirely uninhabited or unpopulated world is “naturally impossible” on account of it being “morally unjustifiable”. Gottfried Leibniz later <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fT7KAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA26&dq=%22fallow,+sterile,+or+dead+in+the+universe%22+monadology&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR49fd8r7jAhWaiVwKHTepBHEQ6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=%22fallow%2C%20sterile%2C%20or%20dead%20in%20the%20universe%22%20monadology&f=false">pronounced</a> that there simply cannot be anything entirely “fallow, sterile, or dead in the universe”.</p>
<p>Along the same lines, the trailblazing scientist Edmond Halley (after whom the famous comet is named) <a href="https://archive.org/details/philtrans00697664/page/n15">reasoned</a> in 1753 that the interior of our planet must likewise be “inhabited”. It would be “unjust” for any part of nature to be left “unoccupied” by moral beings, he argued. </p>
<p>Around the same time Halley provided <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstl.1724.0023">the first theory</a> on a “mass extinction event”. He speculated that comets had previously wiped out entire “worlds” of species. Nonetheless, he also maintained that, after each previous cataclysm “human civilisation had reliably re-emerged”. And it would do so again. Only this, <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstl.1724.0024">he said</a> could make such an event morally justifiable.</p>
<p>Later, in the 1760s, the philosopher Denis Diderot was <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m_l9BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99&dq=%22biped+animal+who+carries+the+name+man%22&source=bl&ots=qy2MMsHghS&sig=ACfU3U2uWt0WXC1N6KKoQHiFPUh4L9Ojog&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj3u-jo8b7jAhUyrHEKHXA-BFUQ6AEwAHoECAAQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22biped%20animal%20who%20carries%20the%20name%20man%22&f=false">attending a dinner party</a> when he was asked whether humans would go extinct. He answered “yes”, but immediately qualified this by saying that after several millions of years the “biped animal who carries the name man” would inevitably re-evolve.</p>
<p>This is what the contemporary planetary scientist Charles Lineweaver identifies as the “<a href="https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0711/0711.1751.pdf">Planet of the Apes Hypothesis</a>”. This refers to the misguided presumption that “human-like intelligence” is a recurrent feature of cosmic evolution: that alien biospheres will reliably produce beings like us. This is what is behind the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sTkfAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=%22there+is+no+guarantee+that+a+rerun+of+evolution%22&source=bl&ots=z2hc748GoH&sig=ACfU3U2_zEbLku-j4CMzkpJUCDN_ARa52A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizopva8L7jAhU1sXEKHZgqB_EQ6AEwAHoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22there%20is%20no%20guarantee%20that%20a%20rerun%20of%20evolution%22&f=false">wrong-headed</a> assumption that, should we be wiped out today, something like us will inevitably return tomorrow.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8lRul_wt6-w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Back in Diderot’s time, this assumption was pretty much the only game in town. It was why one British astronomer <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=80VZAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA76&dq=%22Mortality+with+us+upon+the+Earth%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMkf6C-L7jAhU7URUIHfBPA8MQ6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=%22Mortality%20with%20us%20upon%20the%20Earth%22&f=false">wrote</a>, in 1750, that the destruction of our planet would matter as little as “Birth-Days or Mortalities” do down on Earth.</p>
<p>This was typical thinking at the time. Within the prevailing worldview of eternally returning humanoids throughout an infinitely populated universe, there was simply no pressure or need to care for the future. Human extinction simply couldn’t matter. It was trivialised to the point of being unthinkable.</p>
<p>For the same reasons, the idea of the “future” was also missing. People simply didn’t care about it in the way we do now. Without the urgency of a future riddled with risk, there was no motivation to be interested in it, let alone attempt to predict and preempt it.</p>
<p>It was the dismantling of such dogmas, beginning in the 1700s and ramping up in the 1800s, that set the stage for the enunciation of Fermi’s Paradox in the 1900s and leads to our growing appreciation for our cosmic precariousness today.</p>
<h2>But then we realised the skies are silent</h2>
<p>In order to truly care about our mutable position down here, we first had to notice that the cosmic skies above us are crushingly silent. Slowly at first, though soon after gaining momentum, this realisation began to take hold around the same time that Diderot had his dinner party.</p>
<p>One of the first examples of a different mode of thinking I’ve found is from 1750, when the French polymath Claude-Nicholas Le Cat wrote a history of the earth. Like Halley, he posited the now familiar cycles of “ruin and renovation”. Unlike Halley, he was conspicuously unclear as to whether humans would return after the next cataclysm. A shocked reviewer picked up on this, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=me9dAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA384&dq=%22earth+shall+be+re-peopled%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiinqKY-L7jAhUzQhUIHUhSA2kQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=%22earth%20shall%20be%20re-peopled%22&f=false">demanding</a> to know whether “Earth shall be re-peopled with new inhabitants”. In reply, the author facetiously <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=me9dAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA388&dq=%22gratify+the+curiosity+of+the+new+inhabitants+of+the+new+world%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFgpyq-L7jAhUgXhUIHZcwBlEQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=%22gratify%20the%20curiosity%20of%20the%20new%20inhabitants%20of%20the%20new%20world%22&f=false">asserted</a> that our fossil remains would “gratify the curiosity of the new inhabitants of the new world, if there be any”. The cycle of eternally returning humanoids was unwinding.</p>
<p>In line with this, the French encyclopaedist Baron d’Holbach <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=W1e4H6A-XQIC&pg=PA146&dq=d%27holbach+%22inhabited+by+beings+resembling+ourselves%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwickcfR-L7jAhVFsXEKHc8xAWcQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=d'holbach%20%22inhabited%20by%20beings%20resembling%20ourselves%22&f=false">ridiculed</a> the “conjecture that other planets, like our own, are inhabited by beings resembling ourselves”. He <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=W1e4H6A-XQIC&pg=PA145&dq=d%27holbach+%22obliged+to+disappear%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi40ZTw-L7jAhXJh1wKHVd1DRQQ6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=d'holbach%20%22obliged%20to%20disappear%22&f=false">noted</a> that precisely this dogma – and the related belief that the cosmos is inherently full of moral value – had long obstructed appreciation that the human species could permanently “disappear” from existence. By 1830, the German philosopher F W J Schelling <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hu4GAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA312&dq=berall+menschen%C3%A4hnliche+Wesen+verbreitet+und+letzter+Zweck+seyn+sollen&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiahp6G-b7jAhXUNcAKHXvbDw0Q6AEIYTAH#v=onepage&q=berall%20menschen%C3%A4hnliche%20Wesen%20verbreitet%20und%20letzter%20Zweck%20seyn%20sollen&f=false">declared</a> it utterly naive to go on presuming “that humanoid beings are found everywhere and are the ultimate end”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286269/original/file-20190730-186809-4g43jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286269/original/file-20190730-186809-4g43jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286269/original/file-20190730-186809-4g43jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286269/original/file-20190730-186809-4g43jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286269/original/file-20190730-186809-4g43jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286269/original/file-20190730-186809-4g43jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286269/original/file-20190730-186809-4g43jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figures illustrating articles on astronomy, from the 1728 Cyclopaedia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Table_of_Astronomy,_Cyclopaedia,_Volume_1,_p_164.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And so, where Galileo had once spurned the idea of a dead world, the German astronomer Wilhelm Olbers <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002182861304400205">proposed</a> in 1802 that the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt in fact constitutes the ruins of a shattered planet. Troubled by this, Godwin noted that this would mean that the creator had allowed part of “his creation” to become irremediably “unoccupied”. But scientists were <a href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/29601#page/234/mode/1up">soon</a> computing the precise explosive force needed to crack a planet – assigning cold numbers where moral intuitions once prevailed. Olbers <a href="https://zs.thulb.uni-jena.de/receive/jportal_jparticle_00319471">calculated</a> a precise timeframe within which to expect such an event befalling Earth. Poets began writing of “<a href="https://books.google.it/books?id=pdcvAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA137&dq=thomas+beddoes+%22bursten+worlds%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz2M_4x9jjAhWDDewKHZfTCRYQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=thomas%20beddoes%20%22bursten%20worlds%22&f=false">bursten worlds</a>”.</p>
<p>The cosmic fragility of life was becoming undeniable. If Earth happened to drift away from the sun, one 1780s Parisian diarist <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=48APAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA24&dq=mercier+rambling+in+void+space&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizvoS0-77jAhUdQEEAHU1XBtcQ6AEILDAA#v=onepage&q=mercier%20rambling%20in%20void%20space&f=false">imagined</a> that interstellar coldness would “annihilate the human race, and the earth rambling in the void space, would exhibit a barren, depopulated aspect”. Soon after, the Italian pessimist Giacomo Leopardi <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ynNH84gAdNoC&pg=PA419&dq=leopardi+%22frozen+like+pieces+of+rock+crystal%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjC4M7N-77jAhVKi1wKHVe5BWgQ6AEIMzAC#v=onepage&q=leopardi%20%22frozen%20like%20pieces%20of%20rock%20crystal%22&f=false">envisioned</a> the same scenario. He said that, shorn of the sun’s radiance, humanity would “all die in the dark, frozen like pieces of rock crystal”.</p>
<p>Galileo’s inorganic world was now a chilling possibility. Life, finally, had become cosmically delicate. Ironically, this appreciation came not from scouring the skies above but from probing the ground below. Early geologists, during the later 1700s, realised that Earth has its own history and that organic life has not always been part of it. Biology hasn’t even been a permanent fixture down here on Earth – why should it be one elsewhere? Coupled with growing scientific proof that many species had previously become extinct, this slowly transformed our view of the cosmological position of life as the 19th century dawned.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286266/original/file-20190730-186833-a3v7wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286266/original/file-20190730-186833-a3v7wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286266/original/file-20190730-186833-a3v7wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286266/original/file-20190730-186833-a3v7wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286266/original/file-20190730-186833-a3v7wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286266/original/file-20190730-186833-a3v7wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286266/original/file-20190730-186833-a3v7wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Copper engraving of a pterodactyl fossil discovered by the Italian scientist Cosimo Alessandro Collini in 1784.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pterodactylus_holotype_Collini_1784.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Seeing death in the stars</h2>
<p>And so, where people like Diderot looked up into the cosmos in the 1750s and saw a teeming petri dish of humanoids, writers such as Thomas de Quincey were, by 1854, gazing upon the Orion nebula and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uNtJiUIcN_sC&pg=PA179&dq=de+quincey+%22frightful+depth+to+which+it+is+sunk+in+the+abysses+of+the+heavenly+wilderness%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZ1NH7-77jAhWKUMAKHRchAk4Q6AEINjAC#v=onepage&q=de%20quincey%20%22frightful%20depth%20to%20which%20it%20is%20sunk%20in%20the%20abysses%20of%20the%20heavenly%20wilderness%22&f=false">reporting</a> that they saw only a gigantic inorganic “skull” and its lightyear-long rictus grin.</p>
<p>The astronomer William Herschel had, already in 1814, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6b80AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA541&dq=herschel+%22kind+of+chronometer%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj33t-V_L7jAhWHX8AKHWesD2IQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=herschel%20%22kind%20of%20chronometer%22&f=false">realised</a> that looking out into the galaxy one is looking into a “kind of chronometer”. Fermi would spell it out a century after de Quincey, but people were already intuiting the basic notion: looking out into dead space, we may just be looking into our own future.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284849/original/file-20190718-116547-w9zo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284849/original/file-20190718-116547-w9zo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284849/original/file-20190718-116547-w9zo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284849/original/file-20190718-116547-w9zo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284849/original/file-20190718-116547-w9zo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284849/original/file-20190718-116547-w9zo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284849/original/file-20190718-116547-w9zo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Early drawings of Orion’s nebula by R.S. Newall, 1884.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/225996?show=full">© Cambridge University</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People were becoming aware that the appearance of intelligent activity on Earth should not be taken for granted. They began to see that it is something distinct – something that stands out against the silent depths of space. Only through realising that what we consider valuable is not the cosmological baseline did we come to grasp that such values are not necessarily part of the natural world. Realising this was also realising that they are entirely our own responsibility. And this, in turn, summoned us to the modern projects of prediction, preemption and strategising. It is how we came to care about our future.</p>
<p>As soon as people first started discussing human extinction, possible preventative measures were suggested. Bostrom <a href="https://youtu.be/f9HvMLSD0jo">now refers</a> to this as “macrostrategy”. However, as early as the 1720s, the French diplomat Benoît de Maillet was <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RO1hAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=%22in%20order%20to%20mainain%22&f=false">suggesting</a> gigantic feats of geoengineering that could be leveraged to buffer against climate collapse. The notion of humanity as a geological force has been around ever since we started thinking about the long-term – it is only recently that scientists have accepted this and given it a name: “Anthropocene”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XrgIXVKmcZY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Will technology save us?</h2>
<p>It wasn’t long before authors began conjuring up highly technologically advanced futures aimed at protecting against existential threat. The eccentric Russian futurologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Odoyevsky">Vladimir Odoevskii</a>, writing in the 1830s and 1840s, imagined humanity engineering the global climate and installing gigantic machines to “repulse” comets and other threats, for example. Yet Odoevskii was also keenly aware that with self-responsibility comes risk: the risk of abortive failure. Accordingly, he was also the very first author to propose the possibility that humanity might destroy itself with its own technology.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/betting-on-speculative-geoengineering-may-risk-an-escalating-climate-debt-crisis-119889">Betting on speculative geoengineering may risk an escalating ‘climate debt crisis’</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Acknowledgement of this plausibility, however, is not necessarily an invitation to despair. And it remains so. It simply demonstrates appreciation of the fact that, ever since we realised that the universe is not teeming with humans, we have come to appreciate that the fate of humanity lies in our hands. We may yet prove unfit for this task, but – then as now – we cannot rest assured believing that humans, or something like us, will inevitably reappear – here or elsewhere.</p>
<p>Beginning in the late 1700s, appreciation of this has snowballed into our ongoing tendency to be swept up by concern for the deep future. Current initiatives, such as Bostrom’s Future of Humanity Institute, can be seen as emerging from this broad and <a href="https://youtu.be/RiM7IwZWW5g">edifying</a> historical sweep. From ongoing demands for climate justice to dreams of space colonisation, all are continuations and offshoots of a tenacious task that we first began to set for ourselves two centuries ago during the Enlightenment when we first realised that, in an otherwise silent universe, we are responsible for the entire fate of human value.</p>
<p>It may be solemn, but becoming concerned for humanity’s extinction is nothing other than realising one’s obligation to strive for unceasing self-betterment. Indeed, ever since the Enlightenment, we have progressively realised that we must think and act ever better because, should we not, we may never think or act again. And that seems – to me at least – like a very rational end of the world.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/environmental-stress-is-already-causing-death-this-chaos-map-shows-where-123796?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">‘Environmental stress is already causing death – this chaos map shows where
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/futurology-how-a-group-of-visionaries-looked-beyond-the-possible-a-century-ago-and-predicted-todays-world-118134?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Futurology: how a group of visionaries looked beyond the possible a century ago and predicted today’s world</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/charles-dickens-newly-discovered-documents-reveal-truth-about-his-death-and-burial-13007?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK9">Charles Dickens: newly discovered documents reveal truth about his death and burial</a></em></p></li>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Moynihan received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2014-2017).</span></em></p>
Realising the silence of outer space was what made us appreciate our precarious position down on this pale blue dot – so beginning our obsession with extinction.
Thomas Moynihan, PhD Candidate, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/114348
2019-03-29T10:01:25Z
2019-03-29T10:01:25Z
Catastrophic failure of Earth’s global systems led to the extinction of the dinosaurs – we may yet go the same way
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266113/original/file-20190327-139368-18zc5th.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C997%2C562&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/dinosaur-skeleton-oil-station-desert-185102012">iurii/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Why did the dinosaurs die out?” The consensus, among palaeontologists and dinosaur crazy seven-year-olds alike, seems to be that about 66m years ago a 10km diameter asteroid crashed into what is now Central America. It raised up a cloud of dust and ash that spread across the upper atmosphere, blocking out the sun, cooling the Earth and destroying the ozone layer that protects life from harmful cosmic radiation. </p>
<p>These effects lasted more than a decade, devastating Earth’s plants and plankton. The devastation rapidly travelled up food chains, first killing off the large herbivores, who were unable to find enough food, and then the carnivores, who soon found themselves in the same position. A staggering 75% of species, including all “non-avian” dinosaurs, died out. This event, known as the <a href="https://samnoblemuseum.ou.edu/understanding-extinction/mass-extinctions/end-cretaceous-extinction/">end-Cretaceous mass extinction</a>, is one of <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinctions">the “big five” such extinctions</a> known from the past 500m years of Earth’s history.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266122/original/file-20190327-139341-1e31fjv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266122/original/file-20190327-139341-1e31fjv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266122/original/file-20190327-139341-1e31fjv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266122/original/file-20190327-139341-1e31fjv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266122/original/file-20190327-139341-1e31fjv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266122/original/file-20190327-139341-1e31fjv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266122/original/file-20190327-139341-1e31fjv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">PENDING PERMISSION.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://samnoblemuseum.ou.edu/understanding-extinction/mass-extinctions/end-cretaceous-extinction/">Sam Noble Museum, Oklahoma University</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But this was not the only dramatic event to coincide with the death of the dinosaurs. At around the same time, in central India, a <a href="http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/deccan-traps">truly colossal series of volcanoes</a> were spewing out over a million cubic kilometres of lava together with sulphur and carbon dioxide that changed the climate and caused global acid rain. Meanwhile, a slowing of undersea tectonic activity led to one of the most rapid periods of falling sea levels in the history of the planet, devastating coastal ecosystems.</p>
<p>This has led to some <a href="http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2018/5/1/consensus-schmosensus-dead-dinosaurs-big-rocks-simple-stories">pretty heated debates</a> about what “really” killed the dinosaurs, especially as there have been times when <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/mass-extinctions-and-meteorite-impacts/">similarly dramatic events</a> occurred without seeming to cause nearly so much harm. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266090/original/file-20190327-139341-1kjoa7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266090/original/file-20190327-139341-1kjoa7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266090/original/file-20190327-139341-1kjoa7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266090/original/file-20190327-139341-1kjoa7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266090/original/file-20190327-139341-1kjoa7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266090/original/file-20190327-139341-1kjoa7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266090/original/file-20190327-139341-1kjoa7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the ‘big five’ extinctions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/3d-illustration-brontosaurs-looking-upon-meteors-408550594">AuntSpray/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps this is the wrong question to ask.</p>
<h2>Profound, complex, interconnected change</h2>
<p>Growing evidence now suggests that these events were interconnected and that the dinosaurs’ extinction cannot be explained as a simple process during which one “bad thing” fell out of a clear blue sky and everything died. Rather, it involved <a href="https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/research-posts/dinosaurs-fell-victim-to-perfect-storm-of-events-study-infers">profound, complex and interconnected changes</a> to the global systems that support life.</p>
<p>For instance, the late cretaceous period saw gradual and subtle <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12128">restructuring of terrestrial ecosystems</a>, making them more vulnerable to catastrophic collapse. Such restructuring was potentially brought about by multiple evolutionary and ecological changes related to climate change, the increasing dominance of flowering plants, and fluctuations in the diversity and abundance of particular dinosaur groups. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266105/original/file-20190327-139371-9n1fhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266105/original/file-20190327-139371-9n1fhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266105/original/file-20190327-139371-9n1fhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266105/original/file-20190327-139371-9n1fhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266105/original/file-20190327-139371-9n1fhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266105/original/file-20190327-139371-9n1fhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266105/original/file-20190327-139371-9n1fhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266105/original/file-20190327-139371-9n1fhn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dinosaur tracks in remote Arizona, US.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/dinosaur-tracks-remote-place-arizona-usa-421602853">Asif Islam/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nor is this complexity an unusual feature of mass extinctions. Across all five of Earth’s devastating global catastrophes, there is a <a href="https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/massextinct_08">veritable whodunit</a> of possible causes. These include asteroids, volcanoes, climate change (both warming and cooling), the evolution of new species such as deep-rooted plants that turned bare rock into rich soil for the first time, and even the effects of nearby exploding stars. </p>
<p>Yet, the biggest of all mass extinction events, the “Great Dying” at the end of the Permian period 250m years ago – which killed 90% of all species on Earth – looks even more complex. No fewer than seven potentially catastrophic events are associated with this period in geological history. These include the evolution of new strains of microorganism, an asteroid impact, and a humongous area of volcanic activity in present day Siberia that erupted for <a href="https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/october/scientists-find-evidence-that-siberian-volcanic-eruptions-caused.html">a million years</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266119/original/file-20190327-139361-qicprp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266119/original/file-20190327-139361-qicprp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266119/original/file-20190327-139361-qicprp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266119/original/file-20190327-139361-qicprp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266119/original/file-20190327-139361-qicprp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266119/original/file-20190327-139361-qicprp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266119/original/file-20190327-139361-qicprp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266119/original/file-20190327-139361-qicprp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carboniferous crinoid, or ‘sea lily’ significantly decreased after the End-Permian extinction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event#/media/File:Agaricocrinus_americanus_Carboniferous_Indiana.jpg">Vassil/Wikipedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the greatest changes may have taken place in the Earth’s oceans. There were large-scale emissions of methane from the ocean floor,the stagnation of ocean currents, increased levels of sulphur dioxide causing phytoplankton death, and <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-did-great-dying-kill-96-percent-earths-ocean-dwelling-creatures-180970992/">declining levels of oxygen</a>.</p>
<p>With so much going on, it is less surprising that 90% of all species died out than that 10% survived.</p>
<h2>Precarious times</h2>
<p>What does this imply about our current age, which many now see as constituting a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/10/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn">“sixth” mass extinction</a>? At the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University, we often come up against the problem of today’s “unprecedented” global threats. Some of these, like the threats from nuclear weapons or Artificial Intelligence, may seem akin to asteroids falling out of the sky, and we are often asked which most worry us. One thing we can take away from the study of previous mass extinctions is that this question may be misplaced. </p>
<p>Humanity lives far more precariously than we think, dependent upon a great many global systems, from the environment that provides us with food, water, clean air and energy to the global economy that supplies goods and services where we want them and when we want them, often on a “just in time” basis.</p>
<p>From looking at the historical, and the geological, record it becomes clear that such systems can easily pass through phase changes in which a previously stable system quickly, and sometimes irrevocably, changes into a chaotic one. Scientists have already identified how this might occur in relation to phenomena such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/09/tipping-points-could-exacerbate-climate-crisis-scientists-fear">climatic tipping points</a> (where climate change becomes self-sustaining, rather than being simply “man-made”), <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/04/science/essay-lost-rivets-and-threads-and-ecosystems-pulled-apart.html">ecosystem collapse</a> (where the loss of a few key species can cause whole ecosystems to disappear), and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45523636">hyperinflation</a> (where previously stable economic institutions cease functioning and money loses its value). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266115/original/file-20190327-139368-1pduy20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266115/original/file-20190327-139368-1pduy20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266115/original/file-20190327-139368-1pduy20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266115/original/file-20190327-139368-1pduy20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266115/original/file-20190327-139368-1pduy20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266115/original/file-20190327-139368-1pduy20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266115/original/file-20190327-139368-1pduy20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Climatic tipping point?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oil-refineries-polluting-carbon-cancer-causing-766204174">Roschetzky Photography/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another thing that we learn from these past events is that there is no law of nature that prevents such phase changes becoming global in scope or catastrophic in nature. If pushed far enough, global systems can evidently collapse into a death-spiral, whereby the damage to one species, ecosystem or environmental process causes problems for others, creating positive feedback that accelerates change and makes it <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/the-ends-of-the-world/529545/">self-sustaining</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, while the popular “<a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-finally-have-an-explanation-for-the-gaia-puzzle-99153">Gaia hypothesis</a>” suggests that global systems act to promote the overall stability of our planet, there is no conclusive evidence that the biosphere adjusts to changes to support the continuation of complex life. Indeed, it was recently suggested that one reason life may be rare on other planets is that its emergence <a href="https://phys.org/news/2016-01-aliens-silent-theyre-dead.html">often pushes planetary systems away</a> from the conditions necessary for its continued existence. It is not impossible that <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/cloud-loss-could-add-8-degrees-to-global-warming-20190225/">this could still happen on Earth</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266116/original/file-20190327-139361-pwkrwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266116/original/file-20190327-139361-pwkrwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266116/original/file-20190327-139361-pwkrwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266116/original/file-20190327-139361-pwkrwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266116/original/file-20190327-139361-pwkrwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266116/original/file-20190327-139361-pwkrwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266116/original/file-20190327-139361-pwkrwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266116/original/file-20190327-139361-pwkrwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Profound change.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/polar-bear-sow-cub-walk-on-703003783">FloridaStock/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nor may the systems we ourselves have designed be any less fragile in this respect. Indeed, many of our institutions have shown themselves to be almost entirely unconcerned with human well-being; so long as they can serve the interests of short-term profit maximisation, voter turnout and other, ultimately useless, goals.</p>
<p>Yet, it might not be all bad news for humanity. Some theorists suggest that the catastrophic effects of a mass extinction tend to sweep away the highly adapted specialists of the era, and allow more flexible generalists to survive and eventually flourish <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/lost-worlds/2012/sep/20/dinosaurs-fossils">into new forms</a>. So perhaps we can take comfort from the fact that humans have showed themselves to be the ultimate generalists, adapting to survive, though not always thrive, in every habitat on Earth, and even in outer space. </p>
<p>But we should also reflect on the fact that most of this flexibility flows not from our biology but from the technologies we have created. Not only are these the very technologies that are leading us to push global systems as far as we have, but they are rapidly <a href="https://theconversation.com/super-intelligence-and-eternal-life-transhumanisms-faithful-follow-it-blindly-into-a-future-for-the-elite-78538">passing out of the realms of human comprehension</a> in their complexity and sophistication. Indeed, it now requires immense individual knowledge to use and maintain them, making each of us, individually, just the sort of adapted specialists most vulnerable in a mass extinction event – something that may not be quite such good news after all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114348/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Beard receives funding from the Isaac Newton Trust and previously received funding from the Templeton World Charity Foundation. He is affiliated with the Liberal Democrats for whom he is a former parliamentary candidate. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren Holt works for The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, which receives grant funding from U.K and external funding bodies and individuals to mitigate risk from globally catastrophic events.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Upchurch receives grant funding from UK Research Councils, charities such as The Leverhulme Trust, National Geographic research etc.. </span></em></p>
Growing evidence suggests that the extinction of the dinosaurs involved profound, complex and interconnected changes to the global systems that support life. Much like we are facing today.
S. J. Beard, Senior Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge
Lauren Holt, Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge
Paul Upchurch, Professor of Palaeobiology, UCL
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36307
2015-01-15T19:07:01Z
2015-01-15T19:07:01Z
Humanity is in the existential danger zone, study confirms
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69125/original/image-20150115-5198-1wd3a4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Humans have ignored the signs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/33364392">Thomas Hawk</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Earth’s climate has always changed. All species eventually become extinct. But a new study has brought into sharp relief the fact that humans have, in the context of geological timescales, produced near instantaneous planetary-scale disruption. We are sowing the seeds of havoc on the Earth, it suggests, and the time is fast approaching when we will reap this harvest. </p>
<p>This in the year that the UN climate change circus will pitch its tents in Paris. December’s <a href="http://climate-l.iisd.org/events/unfccc-cop-21/">Conference of the Parties</a> will be the first time individual nations submit their proposals for their carbon emission reduction targets. Sparks are sure to fly.</p>
<p>The research, published in the journal <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/01/14/science.1259855">Science</a>, should focus the minds of delegates and their nations as it lays out in authoritative fashion how far we are driving the climate and other vital Earth systems beyond any safe operating space. The paper, headed by <a href="http://cci.anu.edu.au/researchers/view/will_steffen/">Will Steffen</a> of the <a href="http://www.anu.edu.au/">Australian National University</a> and <a href="http://www.stockholmresilience.org/">Stockholm Resilience Centre</a>, concludes that our industrialised civilisation is driving a number of key planetary processes into areas of high risk.</p>
<p>It argues climate change along with “biodiversity integrity” should be recognised as core elements of the Earth system. These are two of nine <a href="http://www.stockholmresilience.org/21/research/research-programmes/planetary-boundaries.html">planetary boundaries</a> that we must remain within if we are to avoid undermining the biophysical systems our species depends upon. </p>
<p>The original planetary boundaries were conceived in 2009 by a team lead by <a href="https://www.ted.com/speakers/johan_rockstrom">Johan Rockstrom</a>, also of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Together with his co-authors, Rockstrom produced a list of nine human-driven changes to the Earth’s system: climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, alteration of nitrogen and phosphorus cycling, freshwater consumption, land use change, biodiversity loss, aerosol and chemical pollution. Each of these nine, if driven hard enough, could alter the planet to the point where it becomes a much less hospitable place on which to live.</p>
<p>The past 11,000 years have seen a remarkably stable climate. The name given to this most recent geological epoch is the Holocene. It is perhaps no coincidence that human civilisation emerged during this period of stability. What is certain is that our civilisation is in very important ways dependent on the Earth system remaining within or at least approximately near Holocene conditions.</p>
<p>This is why Rockstrom and co looked at human impacts in these nine different areas. They wanted to consider the risk of humans bringing about the end of the Holocene. Some would argue that we have already entered a new geological epoch – the <a href="http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/workinggroups/anthropocene/">Anthropocene</a> – which recognises that <em>Homo sapiens</em> have become a planet-altering species. But the planetary boundaries concepts doesn’t just attempt to quantify human impacts. It seeks to understand how they may affect human welfare now, and in the future. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69121/original/image-20150115-5198-1u76d8i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69121/original/image-20150115-5198-1u76d8i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69121/original/image-20150115-5198-1u76d8i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69121/original/image-20150115-5198-1u76d8i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69121/original/image-20150115-5198-1u76d8i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69121/original/image-20150115-5198-1u76d8i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69121/original/image-20150115-5198-1u76d8i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69121/original/image-20150115-5198-1u76d8i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s been a stable 11,000 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steffen et al</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/">2009 paper</a> proved to be <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/specials/planetaryboundaries/index.html">very influential</a>, but it also attracted a fair amount of criticism. For example, <a href="http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0910/full/climate.2009.93.html">it has been argued</a> that some of the boundaries are not in fact global in scale. There are very large regional variations in consumption of freshwater and phosphorus fertiliser pollution, for instance.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69115/original/image-20150115-5158-1kyyz3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69115/original/image-20150115-5158-1kyyz3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69115/original/image-20150115-5158-1kyyz3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69115/original/image-20150115-5158-1kyyz3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69115/original/image-20150115-5158-1kyyz3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69115/original/image-20150115-5158-1kyyz3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69115/original/image-20150115-5158-1kyyz3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69115/original/image-20150115-5158-1kyyz3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Phosphorous pollution in croplands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steffen et al</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That means that while globally we may be in the green, there could be an increasing number of regions that are deep in the red.</p>
<h2>Updated boundaries</h2>
<p>The latest research develops the methodology so that it now includes regional evaluations. For example it assesses basin-level freshwater use and biome-level species extinction rates. It also includes a new boundary of “novel entities” – new forms of life and novel compounds the likes of which the Earth system has not experienced and so impact of which is extremely challenging to assess. Ozone-depleting CFCs are perhaps the best example of how a seemingly inert substance can produce planetary damage.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69117/original/image-20150115-5158-1yoyz60.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69117/original/image-20150115-5158-1yoyz60.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69117/original/image-20150115-5158-1yoyz60.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69117/original/image-20150115-5158-1yoyz60.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69117/original/image-20150115-5158-1yoyz60.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69117/original/image-20150115-5158-1yoyz60.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69117/original/image-20150115-5158-1yoyz60.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69117/original/image-20150115-5158-1yoyz60.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tree cover remaining in the world’s major forest biomes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steffen et al</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The paper also gives an update on where we stand on some of the planetary boundaries. At first sight, it looks as though there may be some good news in that climate change is no longer in the red. But then closer inspection reveals that a new yellow “zone of uncertainty with increasing risk” has been added to the previous green and red classification. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69114/original/image-20150115-5185-1ubrset.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69114/original/image-20150115-5185-1ubrset.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69114/original/image-20150115-5185-1ubrset.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69114/original/image-20150115-5185-1ubrset.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69114/original/image-20150115-5185-1ubrset.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69114/original/image-20150115-5185-1ubrset.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69114/original/image-20150115-5185-1ubrset.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69114/original/image-20150115-5185-1ubrset.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">2/9ths into the red.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steffen et al</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Climate change impacts are firmly within this new yellow zone. Our atmosphere currently has about 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide. To recover back to the green zone we still need to get back to 350ppm – the same precautionary boundary as before.</p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly the research produces a two-tier hierarchy in which climate change and biosphere integrity are recognised as the core planetary boundaries through which the others operate. This makes sense: life and climate are the main columns buttressing our continual existence within the Holocene. Weakening them risks amplifying other stresses on other boundaries.</p>
<h2>Reasons not to be cheerful</h2>
<p>And so to the very bad news. Given the importance of biodiversity to the functioning of the Earth’s climate and the other planetary boundaries, it is with real dismay that this study adds yet more evidence to the already burgeoning pile that concludes we appear to be doing our best to destroy it as fast as we possibly can. </p>
<p>Extinction rates are very hard to measure but the background rate – the rate at which species would be lost in the absence of human impacts – is something like ten a year per million species. Current extinction rates are anywhere between 100 to 1000 times higher than that. We are possibly in the middle of one of the great <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121101-a-looming-mass-extinction">mass extinctions</a> in the history of life on Earth. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>James Dyke is answering your questions about planetary boundaries in a <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2wazdg/science_ama_series_im_james_dyke_a_lecturer_in/">Reddit AMA</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36307/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Dyke 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>
The Earth’s climate has always changed. All species eventually become extinct. But a new study has brought into sharp relief the fact that humans have, in the context of geological timescales, produced…
James Dyke, Lecturer in Complex Systems Simulation, University of Southampton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/32124
2014-09-25T12:55:07Z
2014-09-25T12:55:07Z
Five ways the superintelligence revolution might happen
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59932/original/jr2j5t78-1411569521.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Taking over one neuron at a time.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/viipeer/14257895839">viipeer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Biological brains are unlikely to be the final stage of intelligence. Machines already have superhuman strength, speed and stamina – and one day they will have superhuman intelligence. The only reasons this may not occur is if we develop some other dangerous technology first that destroys us, or otherwise fall victim to some <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-five-biggest-threats-to-human-existence-27053">existential risk</a>. </p>
<p>But assuming that scientific and technological progress continues, human-level machine intelligence is very likely to be developed. And shortly thereafter, superintelligence.</p>
<p>Predicting how long it will take to develop such intelligent machines is difficult. Contrary to what some reviewers of my book seem to believe, I don’t have any strong opinion about that matter. (It is as though the only two possible views somebody might hold about the future of artificial intelligence are “machines are stupid and will never live up to the hype!” and “machines are much further advanced than you imagined and true AI is just around the corner!”).</p>
<p>A survey of leading researchers in AI suggests that there is a 50% probability that human-level machine intelligence will have been attained by 2050 (defined here as “one that can carry out most human professions at least as well as a typical human”). This doesn’t seem entirely crazy. But one should place a lot of uncertainty on both sides of this: it could happen much sooner or very much later.</p>
<p>Exactly how we will get there is also still shrouded in mystery. There are several paths of development that should get there eventually, but we don’t know which of them will get there first.</p>
<h2>Biological inspiration</h2>
<p>We do have an actual example of generally intelligent system – the human brain – and one obvious idea is to proceed by trying to work out how this system does the trick. A full understanding of the brain is a very long way off, but it might be possible to glean enough of the basic computational principles that the brain uses to enable programmers to adapt them for use in computers without undue worry about getting all the messy biological details right.</p>
<p>We already know a few things about the working of the human brain: it is a neural network, it learns through reinforcement learning, it has a hierarchical structure to deal with perceptions and so forth. Perhaps there are a few more basic principles that we still need to discover – and that would then enable somebody to clobber together some form of “neuromorphic AI”: one with elements cribbed from biology but implemented in a way that is not fully biologically realistic.</p>
<h2>Pure mathematics</h2>
<p>Another path is the more mathematical “top-down” approach, which makes little or no use of insights from biology and instead tries to work things out from first principles. This would be a more desirable development path than neuromorphic AI, because it would be more likely to force the programmers to understand what they are doing at a deep level – just as doing an exam by working out the answers yourself is likely to require more understanding than doing an exam by copying one of your classmates’ work.</p>
<p>In general, we want the developers of the first human-level machine intelligence, or the first seed AI that will grow up to be superintelligence, to know what they are doing. We would like to be able to prove mathematical theorems about the system and how it will behave as it rises through the ranks of intelligence.</p>
<h2>Brute Force</h2>
<p>One could also imagine paths that rely more on brute computational force, such by as making extensive use of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-get-ants-to-solve-a-chess-problem-22282">genetic algorithms</a>. Such a development path is undesirable for the same reason that the path of neuromorphic AI is undesirable – because it could more easily succeed with a less than full understanding of what is being built. Having massive amounts of hardware could, to a certain extent, substitute for having deep mathematical insight.</p>
<p>We already know of code that would, given sufficiently ridiculous amounts of computing power, instantiate a superintelligent agent. The <a href="http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b138233">AIXI model</a> is an example. As best we can tell, it would destroy the world. Thankfully, the required amounts of computer power are physically impossible.</p>
<h2>Plagiarising nature</h2>
<p>The path of whole brain emulation, finally, would proceed by literally making a digital copy of a particular human mind. The idea would be to freeze or vitrify a brain, chop it into thin slices and feed those slices through an array of microscopes. Automated image recognition software would then extract the map of the neural connections of the original brain. This 3D map would be combined with neurocomputational models of the functionality of the various neuron types constituting the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuropil">neuropil</a>, and the whole computational structure would be run on some sufficiently capacious supercomputer. This approach would require very sophisticated technologies, but no new deep theoretical breakthrough.</p>
<p>In principle, one could imagine a sufficiently high-fidelity emulation process that the resulting digital mind would retain all the beliefs, desires, and personality of the uploaded individual. But I think it is likely that before the technology reached that level of perfection, it would enable a cruder form of emulation that would yield a distorted human-ish mind. And before efforts to achieve whole brain emulation would achieve even that degree of success, they would probably spill over into neuromorphic AI.</p>
<h2>Competent humans first, please</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most attractive path to machine superintelligence would be an indirect one, on which we would first enhance humanity’s own biological cognition. This could be achieved through, say, genetic engineering along with institutional innovations to improve our collective intelligence and wisdom. </p>
<p>It is not that this would somehow enable us “to keep up with the machines” – the ultimate limits of information processing in machine substrate far exceed those of a biological cortex however far enhanced. The contrary is instead the case: human cognitive enhancement would hasten the day when machines overtake us, since smarter humans would make more rapid progress in computer science. However, it would seem on balance beneficial if the transition to the machine intelligence era were engineered and overseen by a more competent breed of human, even if that would result in the transition happening somewhat earlier than otherwise.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, we can make the most of the time available, be it long or short, by getting to work on the control problem, the problem of how to ensure that superintelligent agents would be safe and beneficial. This would be a suitable occupation for some of our generation’s best mathematical talent.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Conversation organised a public <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2hbp21/science_ama_series_im_nick_bostrom_director_of/">question-and-answer session</a> on Reddit in which Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, talked about developing artificial intelligence and related topics.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Bostrom is the director of the Future of Humanity Institute and the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, both based in the Oxford Martin School. He is the author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.</span></em></p>
Biological brains are unlikely to be the final stage of intelligence. Machines already have superhuman strength, speed and stamina – and one day they will have superhuman intelligence. The only reasons…
Nick Bostrom, Director, Future of Humanity Institute at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/27053
2014-05-29T05:21:02Z
2014-05-29T05:21:02Z
The 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">
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<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">
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<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>
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<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">
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<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>
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<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>
<figure class="align-center ">
<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 Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/26617
2014-05-12T17:38:26Z
2014-05-12T17:38:26Z
From 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 Oxford
Andrew Snyder-Beattie, Researcher, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/19923
2013-11-06T18:03:27Z
2013-11-06T18:03:27Z
Secrets revealed of ‘dash-cam’ meteorite that rocked Russia
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34557/original/dg69ck4r-1383757496.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The trail of a meteor that caused some harm, but mostly helped humanity understand the meteorite strikes on Earth.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">alexeya</span></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34557/original/dg69ck4r-1383757496.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34557/original/dg69ck4r-1383757496.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34557/original/dg69ck4r-1383757496.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34557/original/dg69ck4r-1383757496.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34557/original/dg69ck4r-1383757496.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34557/original/dg69ck4r-1383757496.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34557/original/dg69ck4r-1383757496.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Is it a bird, is it a plane?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">alexeya</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The asteroid impact that burst over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on the morning of February 15 has provided a huge collection of new data that scientists have been analysing since. This week, three papers, two in Nature and one in Science, describe new aspects of the meteorite’s airburst, building the most-detailed forensic picture of the events of that morning.</p>
<p>First reports of the Chelyabinsk airburst came from a plethora of dash-cams that caught the event. For the first time, a meteorite impact was recorded widely on camera, a consequence of technological advance and (presumably) increasingly litigious or bad Russian drivers. Alongside the dash-cam recordings, the fireball and the transient shadow that it cast was recorded across the region by fixed CCTV cameras. And looking back at Earth from space, the trajectory of the fireball was observed in <a href="http://www.space.com/23273-russia-meteor-chelyabinsk-satellite-photos.html">satellite imagery</a>.</p>
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<p>The brightness of the fireball has provided an estimate of the energy of the airburst, equivalent to an explosion of more than 500 kilotons of TNT, many times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Similar estimates of the size of the explosion were obtained earlier this year from the array of infrasound detectors operated by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which maintains an array of nuclear bomb monitoring equipment.</p>
<p>The new papers exploit an even wider array of data. Much of the information is, effectively, a superb example of crowdsourced science: damage reports, surveys of damage, injury reports, camera recordings and other data have provided an unprecedented set of measurements of the event, as reported in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1242642">Science</a> by Olga Popova and colleagues.</p>
<p>Alongside the data from Earth is information from astronomy, planetary science, geophysics, meteoritics and cosmology. The meteorite that fell to Earth has now been classified as an LL chondrite. It formed early in the history of the Solar System, as asteroids and eventually planets condensed from the nebula.</p>
<p>Fragments of the meteorite recovered from near Chelyabinsk, including an enormous rock dredged from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul, have revealed its early history. We have all this even though less than one thousandth of the asteroid has been retrieved, and more than three quarters is estimated to have evaporated.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34554/original/4k23ggcw-1383756792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34554/original/4k23ggcw-1383756792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34554/original/4k23ggcw-1383756792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34554/original/4k23ggcw-1383756792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34554/original/4k23ggcw-1383756792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34554/original/4k23ggcw-1383756792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34554/original/4k23ggcw-1383756792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=316&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">Fragments of the meteorite recovered and the site of impact.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Popova et al</span></span>
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<p>Measurements of the radioactive decay products from traces of uranium in the meteorite minerals show that it must have itself suffered a harsh collision during the maelstrom in which asteroids condensed, which occurred at around 115m years after the birth of the Solar System. Its existence as a discrete asteroid ended almost four and a half billion years later when it struck Russia.</p>
<p>The eyewitness reports of the airburst, as well as the damage it caused, give an idea of the sorts of effects caused by such “near miss” events. Entering the atmosphere almost 100km above the surface, at speeds of around 20km/second, the 20-metre wide asteroid set up a shockwave at 90 km altitude. By 83 km it had started to fall apart. By the time it got to around 35 km above Russia it was shining as a bright shooting star, emitting light that burnt the retinas of any watching it, and sending out a shockwave sideways from its path that blew some folk off their feet.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tq02C_3FvFo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>As the video makes it clear, the shockwave broke phone networks, upset the electric grid, and interrupted the gas supply in some districts of Emanzhelinka as the valves closed in response to the vibration. No bones were broken, but some residents were hurt by flying debris and glass, while others suffered concussion.</p>
<p>Similar descriptions of the trajectory, determined from video data, are reported by in the first <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12671">Nature</a> paper. Risk estimates for asteroid fireball damage have, up to now, been based on data from nuclear bomb airburst tests. In the second <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12741">Nature</a> paper, researchers compare damage caused by the Chelyabinsk airburst with previous models for asteroid damage showing that the risks have been underestimated. The latest data increase the potential danger of impacts from asteroids tens of metres across.</p>
<p>These results demonstrate the forensic value of the asteroid that fell to Earth in February this year, both for assessing how such bodies come into existence, and interact with our planetary home, but also how we might assess the risk of such events into the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19923/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The asteroid impact that burst over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on the morning of February 15 has provided a huge collection of new data that scientists have been analysing since. This week, three papers, two…
Simon Redfern, Professor in Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
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