Global Catastrophic Risks
December 9th, 2008 Posted in Futurism, Risks
Two non-profit organizations that advocate for the ethical use of highly powerful emerging technologies participated in an afternoon conference in Mountain View on November 14. Those orgs were the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and the Center for Respondible Nanotechnology, and the discussion was on building a resilient civilization to mitigate global catastrophic risks. I am in the process of editing footage of the presentations and transcribing talks to the Future Current weblog on the Accelerating Future web domain. Video, audio and text of J. Hughes on why we need transnational governance to mitigate risk has already been made available.
The conference follows a three-day Catastropalooza, in the words of Hughes, taking place at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. The Future of Humanity Institute’s videographers appear to be too busy punting to put media of the event online, though it’s been close to five months, which is a shame seeing as the likes of Martin Rees, Nick Bostrom, Chris Pheonix and Robin Hanson presented. The Mountain View get-together will be viewable online in the coming weeks, including the participation of futurists Mike Treder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, George Dvorsky and Anders Sandberg among others. Until then, see media and hear comments via the GCR08 hash tag on twitter and flickr.