podcasts

The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk is an interdisciplinary research centre focused on the study of risks threatening human extinction that may emerge from technological advances. CSER aims to combine key insights from the best minds across disciplines to tackle the greatest challenge of the coming century: safely harnessing our rapidly-developing technological power.

An existential risk is one that threatens the existence of our entire species. The Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) — a joint initiative between philosopher Huw Price, cosmologist Martin Rees, and software entrepreneur Jaan Tallinn — was founded on the conviction that these risks require a great deal more scientific investigation than they presently receive. The Centre’s aim is to develop a new science of existential risk, and to develop protocols for the investigation and mitigation of technology-driven existential risks. 

The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk

Speaker(s): Professor Lord Stern of Brentford | Introducing his new book, Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency and Promise of Tackling Climate Change Professor Stern will argue that the transition to a low-carbon economy and rapid structural transformations to the world economy provide a story of growth and poverty reduction that is attractive and sustainable. Nicholas Stern is IG Patel Professor and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE and President of the British Academy. Craig Calhoun (@craigjcalhoun) is Director and President of LSE.  The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (@GRI_LSE) is a research centre at LSE. The Institute’s research looks at the economics of climate change, and aims to inform policy and academic debate. The Centre for Economic Performance (@CEP_LSE) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the LSE Research Laboratory. It was established by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in 1990 and is now one of the leading economic research groups in Europe. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency and Promise of Tackling Climate Change [Audio]

Speaker(s): Richard Dobbs, Jonathan Woetzel, Stephanie Flanders | Since the start of the new century, the world has started to change - and radically. The collision of four global forces means we are now living in an era of near constant discontinuity. Competitors can burst upon the scene in a blink of an eye. Businesses that were protected by large and deep moats find that their defences are easily breached. Vast new markets are conjured seemingly from nothing. Five years is an eternity. In a new book, No Ordinary Disruption, the three leaders of the McKinsey Global Institute, McKinsey's business and economics research arm, argue that the world is now roughly in the middle of a dramatic transition as a result of four fundamental disruptive trends: growth and urbanisation in emerging markets, technological disruption, increasing connectivity, and the ageing of populations. None of these disruptions, on its own, is a surprise. The unique challenge is that they are happening at the same time - and on a huge scale, creating second-, third-, and even fourth-order effects that are scarcely possible to anticipate. As they collide, they will produce change so significant that much of the management intuition that has served us in the past will become irrelevant, causing us to reset our collective intuition. This event marks the publication of No Ordinary Disruption. Richard Dobbs is a Director of the McKinsey Global Institute (@McKinsey_MGI), McKinsey & Company’s economics and business research arm, and a Director (Senior Partner) of McKinsey, based in London.  He joined the firm in 1988, and more recently from 2004 to 2009 co-led its Corporate Finance Practice. From 2009, Richard has co-led the McKinsey Global Institute, first from South Korea and then from London.  He is a co-author of Value, the Four Cornerstones of Corporate Finance, published in November 2010, and his work has appeared in several books, including Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies, and Korea 2020 – Global Perspectives for the next decade. Richard received a B.A. in engineering, economics, and management at Oxford University, where he obtained a first-class degree. Based in Shanghai, Jonathan Woetzel is a director of the McKinsey Global Institute and leads McKinsey research on China, Asia, and global economic and business trends. As leader of the firm’s Cities Initiative, he has conducted more than 60 projects for governments throughout China to support local economic development and transformation. He also supports the transformation of Chinese companies into global leaders. Stephanie Flanders (@MyStephanomics​) is Managing Director and Chief Market Strategist for the UK and Europe, J.P. Morgan Asset Management.  Stephanie was previously the Economics Editor at the BBC.  Prior to this, she worked as a reporter at the New York Times, a speechwriter and senior adviser to US Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, a Financial Times leader-writer and columnist, and an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the London Business School. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

No Ordinary Disruption: the four global forces breaking all the trends [Audio]

Speaker(s): Dr Alina Averchenkova, Professor John Broome, Professor Robyn Eckersley, Fergus Green | Tackling climate change is crucial for human well-being. So why has the international community been faltering on effective climate action? How can we break through the collective-action impasse? Alina Averchenkova is Co-Head of Climate Policy in the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE. John Broome is Emeritus White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Robyn Eckersley is Professor of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Fergus Green is Policy Analyst and Research Advisor to Professor Stern in the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE.

International Cooperation and Climate Change [Audio]

Speaker(s): Professor Fawaz Gerges | Fawaz A. Gerges is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and holder of the Emirates Professorship in Contemporary Middle East Studies. He wasalso the inaugural Director of the LSE Middle East Centre from 2010 until 2013. Gerges’ most recent books are The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (Cambridge University Press, January 2014) and Obama and the Middle East: The End of America’s Moment? (Palgrave Macmillan, September 2013). On the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, Oxford University Press released Gerges’ book, The Rise and Fall of Al Qaeda.

Making sense of the Islamic State: An Organic Crisis in Arab Politics [Audio]

Speaker(s): Professor Michael Cox | We have been told for years that war between great powers is a thing of the past: something that has been consigned into that proverbial dustbin of history. Yet today serious writers and influential strategic thinkers in the USA and China are now suggesting that war in East Asia is a very real possibility as China rises - and becomes more assertive - and the United States supported by its Asian allies seeks to limit China’s reach. But how real is the danger of war? Is this just wild speculation by old style thinkers who have not caught up with globalization? Or is the threat real? In this debate between two experts we shall seek to answer these difficult but important questions.

When Will America and China go to war? [Audio]

From the University of Cambridge comes ELECTION, our weekly Politics Podcast; asking the questions that no one else is in the run-up to the British General Election with the greatest minds inside and outside the political arena. 

Can democracy adapt to our strained political system? Who (if anyone) will ‘win’ in 2015? What can the lessons of the past teach us about the future? 

Professor David Runciman interviews and puts these questions to philosophers, historians, scientists, and political thinkers – with enlightening results – in a weekly podcast series coming from his office in the Department of Politics and International Studies. 

More information at http://www.cam.ac.uk/election

S01-EP06 - Rae Langton on Charlie Hebdo, free speech vs hate speech & blasphemy

S01-EP04 - John Naughton on Facebook in Politics, Edward Snowden, & Surveillance

S01-EP02 - Martin Rees on surviving this century, scientists in politics, and 2015

In 2003 Jenny Clay Strauss, daughter of the German Jewish historian of political philosophy Leo Strauss and herself a professor of classics, wrote to the New York Times to protest articles that presented her father “as the mastermind behind the neoconservative ideologues who control United States foreign policy.” She went on: “He reaches out from his 30-year-old grave, we are told, to direct a "cabal" (a word with distinct anti-Semitic overtones) of Bush administration figures hoping to subject the American people to rule by a ruthless elite.” In “A Cabal We Deserve: Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and Public Intellectual Culture,” Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft explores the meanings of conspiracy theories surrounding Leo Strauss and the Straussians. What values of transparency in democratic governance, what attitudes towards lying in politics, animate them? What ideas about conservative as opposed to progressive intellectuals? And what expectations for public intellectual life in a democratic society are bound up with all this talk of conspiracy? 

Leo Strauss and Public Intellectual Culture

The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk is delighted to host Professor Stuart J. Russell (University of California, Berkeley) 

The Long-Term Future of (Artificial) Intelligence

Abstract: The news media in recent months have been full of dire warnings about the risk that AI poses to the human race, coming from well-known figures such as Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates. Should we be concerned? If so, what can we do about it? While some in the mainstream AI community dismiss these concerns, I will argue instead that a fundamental reorientation of the field is required.

Stuart Russell is one of the leading figures in modern artificial intelligence. He is a professor of computer science and founder of the Center for Intelligent Systems at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of the textbook ‘Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach’, widely regarded as one of the standard textbooks in the field. Russell is on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Future of Life Institute and the Advisory Board of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. 

The Long-Term Future of (Artificial) Intelligence

Human-level (“general”) AI is more difficult to achieve than most people think. One key obstacle is relevance, a conceptual version of the frame problem. Another is lack of the semantic web. Yet another is the difficulty of computer vision. So artificial general intelligence (AGI) isn’t on the horizon. Possibly, it may never be achieved. No AGI means no Singularity.

Even so, there’s already plenty to worry about—and future AI advances will add more. Areas of concern include unemployment, computer companions, and autonomous robots (some, military). Worries about the (illusory) Singularity have had the good effect of waking up the AI community (and others) to these dangers. At last, they are being taken seriously.

Professor Margaret Boden is a world-leading academic in the study of intelligence, both artificial and otherwise. She is is Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the Department of informatics at the University of Sussex, where her work embraces the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, cognitive and computer science. She was the founding-Dean of Sussex University’s School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, a pioneering centre for research into intelligence and the mechanisms underlying it — in humans, other animals, or machines. The School’s teaching and research involves an unusual combination of the humanities, science, and technology.

Professor Boden has also been an important participant in the recent international discussions over the long-term impacts of AI. She was a member of the AAAI’s 08/09 Presidential Panel on long-term AI futures (http://www.aaai.org/Organization/presidential-panel.php), and also took part in the recent Puerto Rico conference on the Future of AI, co-organised by CSER (http://futureoflife.org/misc/ai_conference); she is therefore uniquely well-placed to discuss near- and long-term prospects in AI. 

Human - Level AI- Is It Looming Or Illusory?

In the coming century, the greatest threats to human survival may come from our own technological developments. However, if we can safely navigate the pitfalls, the benefits that technology promises are enormous. A philosopher, an astronomer, and an entrepreneur have come together to form the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. The goal: to bring a fraction of humanity's talents to bear on the task of ensuring our long-term survival. In this lecture, Huw Price, Martin Rees and Jaan Tallinn will outline humanity's greatest challenge: surviving the 21st Century.

Professor Huw Price (University of Cambridge)
Lord Martin Rees (Astronomer Royal)
Jaan Tallinn (Co-founder of Skype) 

Existential Risk: Surviving the 21st Century

Writers who speculate about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and its attendant risks often caution against anthropomorphism, the tendency to ascribe human-like characteristics to something non human. An AI that is engineered from first principles will attain its goals in ways that would be hard to predict, and therefore hard to control, especially if it is able to modify and improve on its own design. However, this is not the only route to human-level AI. An alternative is to deliberately set out to make the AI not only human-level but also human-like. The most obvious way to do this is to base the architecture of the AI on that of the human brain. But this path has its own difficulties, many pertaining to the issue of consciousness. Do we really want to create an artefact that is not only capable of empathy, but also capable of suffering? 

Minds Like Ours: An Approach To AI Risk

“Risks and benefits of gain-of-function experiments in potentially pandemic pathogens. How should we evaluate them, and what alternatives exist?”

Professor Derek Smith, Professor of Infectious Disease Informatics at Cambridge, gave a response.

Abstract: "A growing trend in experimental virology has been the modification of influenza viruses that are antigenically novel to, and virulent in humans, such that these variant viruses are readily transmissible in mammals, including ferrets which are thought to be the best animal model for influenza infection. Novel, contagious, virulent viruses are potential pandemic pathogens in that their accidental or malevolent release into the human population could cause a pandemic. This talk will describe the purported benefits of such studies, arguing that these are overstated; estimate the magnitude of the risk they create, argue for the superiority of alternative scientific approaches on both safety and scientific grounds, and propose an ethical framework in which such experiments should be evaluated. The talk will also explore recent developments following the pause in funding for this research announced by the United States Government in October, and steps towards the risk-benefit analysis called for by the announcement"

Professor Lipsitch is a professor of epidemiology and the Director of the Centre for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard University. He is one of the founders of the Cambridge Working group, which calls for a “quantitative, objective and credible assessment of the risks, potential benefits, and opportunities for risk mitigation” of gain of function experiments in potentially pandemic pathogen strains.

For more on the scientific debate, see “Gain-of-function experiments: time for a real debate”. 