27 Mar 2024: New paper The origin and implications of the COVID-19 pandemic: An expert survey with Nemesys Insights. The paper is covered in Science and Deutsche Welle.
2 Aug 2023: New paper Public health and nuclear winter: Addressing a catastrophic threat with Andreas Vilhelmsson. I'm also quoted in the announcement of the new US legislation Health Impacts of Nuclear War Act. See also the GCRI Open Call for Advisees and Collaborators, August 2023.
12 Jan 2023: GCRI has published its 2022 Annual Report. We announced a shift toward public scholarship, in which we aim to contribute to public and policy conversations about global catastrophic risk. Two initial public scholarship outputs: (1) New York's housing plans must address affordability-& climate change and (2) Even with electric vehicles, an expanded Turnpike Extension would be bad for the environment. Both address climate change policy issues I'm familiar with from living in the New York City metropolitan area. Finally, now online for the first time is a 2003 article of mine Affirmative action published in the University of Rochester student magazine UR Messenger.
18 Dec 2022: The GCRI Statement on the Ethics of Funding Sources addresses issues raised by the collapse of the cryptocurrency FTX, which had been a funder of work on global catastrophic risk. I'm interviewed on a new academic search engine Consensus in an article in Grid. I'm now posting regularly on my account on Mastodon. I participated in a discussion Can thriving online include thriving on Mastodon? hosted by environmental journalist Andrew Revkin.
17 Nov 2022: New papers Assessing natural global catastrophic risks and Nonhuman value: A survey of the intrinsic valuation of natural and artificial nonhuman entities, the latter with Andrea Owe and Mark Coeckelbergh. New long-form blog post Doing better on climate change. I've also revived my Twitter account, especially for discussion of Ukraine and nuclear war risk; see this thread of threads. Coverage of my Ukraine/nuclear war discussions in ABC Radio National (Australia), Brookings, Miami Herald (distributed by McClatchey to 28 other newspapers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28), Russia Matters (Harvard Belfer Center), and The Times Radio (UK) (also here). Also quoted in Newsweek.
20 May 2022: New paper Pandemic refuges: Lessons from two years of COVID-19 with Vanessa Adams. New book review of The Precipice by Toby Ord. See also the GCRI Open call for advisees and collaborators, May 2022.
18 Mar 2022: Several new items related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine: (1) the GCRI statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine; (2) How to evaluate the risk of nuclear war, in BBC Future; (3) Early reflections and resources on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in EA Forum. Also, the GCRI statement on pluralism in the field of global catastrophic risk, written to accompany the GCRI paper Greening the universe: The case for ecocentric space expansion by Andrea Owe.
7 Dec 2021: New papers (1) The ethics of sustainability for artificial intelligence with Andrea Owe and (2) Artificial intelligence, systemic risks, and sustainability with Victor Galaz and 13 others. New short articles (1) The case for long-term corporate governance of AI with Jonas Schuett, (2) Artificial intelligence needs environmental ethics with Andrea Owe, and (3) From AI for people to AI for the world and the universe, also with Andrea Owe. See also the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute's Summary of 2021-2022 GCRI accomplishments, plans, and fundraising.
23 Sep 2021: New paper Corporate governance of artificial intelligence in the public interest with Peter Cihon and Jonas Schuett.
19 Jun 2021: New papers (1) Moral consideration of nonhumans in the ethics of artificial intelligence with Andrea Owe, (2) AI certification: Advancing ethical practice by reducing information asymmetries with Peter Cihon, Moritz Kleinaltenkamp, and Jonas Schuett, and (3) Collective action on artificial intelligence: A primer and review with Robert de Neufville. GCRI Open Call for Advisees and Collaborators, May 2021.
9 Oct 2020: Call for papers on Governance of Artificial Intelligence, a special issue I am editing for the journal Information.
11 Sep 2020: New paper Accounting for violent conflict risk in planetary defense decisions, based on a talk I gave at the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference.
10 Aug 2020: New papers Artificial interdisciplinarity: Artificial intelligence for research on complex societal problems and Quantifying the probability of existential catastrophe: A reply to Beard et al.. See also the GCRI Statement on Racism.
5 Jun 2020: New paper Medium-term artificial intelligence and society. New short paper Deep learning and the sociology of human-level artificial intelligence, a review of the book Artifictional Intelligence by Harry Collins. See also the GCRI Statement on the COVID-19 Pandemic.
20 Dec 2019: New paper: Lessons for artificial intelligence from other global risks, in The Global Politics of Artificial Intelligence (CRC Press). Book review of End Times by Bryan Walsh published in Science - read it online here. See GCRI's Summary of 2019-2020 GCRI Accomplishments, Plans, and Fundraising and new $250,000 donation for 2020 Work on AI.
3 Aug 2019: New papers: Risk-risk tradeoff analysis of nuclear explosives for asteroid deflection, in Risk Analysis, and The challenge of analyzing global catastrophic risks, in Decision Analysis Today. Additionally, GCRI has recently launched a new program for advisees and collaborators.
9 Apr 2019: BBC Future has published an article of mine Why catastrophes can change the course of humanity.
14 Mar 2019: π. I appear in the BBC Radio 4 show Will humans survive the century? and John Danaher's podcast Philosophical Disquisitions in an episode titled Baum on the Long-Term Future of Human Civilisation.
15 Feb 2019: New paper: Reflections on the risk analysis of nuclear war, in Proceedings of the Workshop on Quantifying Global Catastrophic Risks, an event last year hosted by the UCLA Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences. The BBC covers my paper Long-term trajectories of human civilization in an article The perils of short-termism: Civilisation’s greatest threat.
1 Dec 2018: Lots of GCRI blog posts related to end-of-year fundraising. See in particular this and this. New paper: Resilience to global catastrophe published by the International Risk Governance Center.
30 Sep 2018: New paper: Countering superintelligence misinformation, in Information. This is a follow-up to my recent paper Superintelligence skepticism as a political tool.
22 Aug 2018: New papers: (1) Long-term trajectories of human civilization, in Foresight. I'm lead author with 14 total co-authors, based on a workshop I led at last year's Workshop on Existential Risk to Humanity at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, organized by Olle Häggström. (2) Uncertain human consequences in asteroid risk analysis and the global catastrophe threshold, in Natural Hazards. (3) Superintelligence skepticism as a political tool, in Information.
1 June 2018: New papers: Evaluating future nanotechnology: The net societal impacts of atomically precise manufacturing, with Steven Umbrello, published in Futures, and A model for the impacts of nuclear war, with and Tony Barrett. New opinion article Preventing an AI apocalypse, published in Project Syndicate, and reprinted in The New Times (Rwanda), Khaleej Times (United Arab Emirates), World Economic Forum, MarketWatch, Japan Times, Asia Times, Médias24 (Morocco), Times of Oman, Khmer Times, Taipei Times, and Dagens Perspektiv (Oslo). I'm interviewed in a Gizmodo article on robot personhood and a Future of Life Institute podcast on my paper A model for the probability of nuclear war.
25 Mar 2018: New paper, A model for the probability of nuclear war, with Robert de Neufville and Tony Barrett.
19 Jan 2018: New paper, Modeling and interpreting expert disagreement about artificial superintelligence, with Tony Barrett and Roman Yampolskiy.
27 Nov 2017: New paper, A Survey of Artificial General Intelligence Projects for Ethics, Risk, and Policy, published as a GCRI working paper. It's a detailed survey of AGI R&D projects, finding 45 projects spread across 30 countries in 6 continents. It's been widely shared, with readers calling it nice, useful, fascinating, really great, and by far the most comprehensive review I've seen. Summary graphic is below. Also, my recent Tech2025 event is covered in an article in TheInk, Debating the Potential Dangers of Artificial Intelligence.
2 Oct 2017: Three new papers out. Social choice ethics in artificial intelligence, forthcoming in AI & Society, critiques two proposals, "bottom-up ethics" and "coherent extrapolated volition", that call for AI to follow society's aggregate ethical values. Liability law for present and future robotics technology with Trevor White, in edited book Robot Ethics 2.0, argues that liability law can handle near-term robots but not some potential future types of robots. Towards an integrated assessment of global catastrophic risk with Tony Barrett, in proceedings of colloquium Catastrophic and Existential Risk, describes the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute's Integrated Assessment Project. Also, on Friday the 13th of October, I'm giving a Nerd Nite NYC talk "You might be killed by zombies, ghosts, witches, demons, goblins, centaurs, mermaids, and/or tire explosions", on death and probability theory.
29 May 2017: My article Reconciliation between factions focused on near-term and long-term artificial intelligence is forthcoming in AI & Society. In short, instead of debating each other, those who favor near-term and long-term AI can pursue mutually beneficial opportunities.
30 Apr 2017: My book review The Social Science of Computerized Brains, reviewing The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth by Robin Hanson, is forthcoming in Futures.
5 Feb 2017: I'm in the new Story Collider podcast for the talk I gave last year on the controversy over my research on winter-safe deterrence.
9 Jan 2017: The recent US election has left a lot to contemplate. Some reflections are in my new Bulletin article What Trump means for global catastrophic risk, and follow-up interviews in Quartz, The Next Chapter radio show, and the NonProphets podcast, plus coverage in Elite Daily. I also have an article in Nautilus, Space colonization and the meaning of life. Finally, I'm featured in a two-part series on mass extinction in the podcast The Adventures of Memento Mori: Part 1 * Part 2.
24 Oct 2016: My Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists column is back with an article Tackling near and far AI threats at once. Also a new article Should we let uploaded brains take over the world? in Scientific American Blogs. I spoke at Story Collider in Brooklyn on 18 October at a pre-Halloween event with a "fear" theme; my talk was about my experience with the winter-safe deterrence debate. My paper On the promotion of safe and socially beneficial artificial intelligence has been accepted at AI & Society. I'm interviewed in the Kickass News podcast 7 October episode about artificial intelligence and the NonProphets podcast 22 October episode about forecasting and global catastrophic risk.
30 Aug 2016: I've been appointed to the Advisory Board of the journal AI & Society. I interview Dario Amodei of OpenAI in a podcast Concrete Problems in AI Safety hosted by Ariel Conn of the Future of Life Institute. Meanwhile, transitioning from a block of research on AI to research on general global catastrophic risk topics.
30 Jul 2016: New working paper On the promotion of safe and socially beneficial artificial intelligence. New paper Alternative foods as a solution to to global food supply catastrophes with Dave Denkenberger and Joshua Pearce, published in Solutions. Interviewed in Here’s how the world could end—and what we can do about it in Science and in a podcast Could an Earthquake Destroy Humanity? with Ariel Conn of the Future of Life Institute. Finally joined academic social media with profiles at Academia.edu, ResearchGate, and SSRN. Meanwhile, mostly writing papers on artificial intelligence via a grant from the Future of Life Institute.
21 June 2016: I just finished a full website update, the first in 5 years. All pages should now be up to date. There are major changes in particular in the research section. There is also a new fiction publications section, containing my new short story The Party at the End of the World. The home page also has a new look.
6 Apr 2016: I have two new papers out: A model of pathways to artificial superintelligence catastrophe for risk and decision analysis co-authored with Tony Barrett, to be published in Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence (check out the full model graphic), and The ethics of outer space: A consequentialist perspective, to be published in a book on the ethics of space exploration. I also have a short story 'The Party at the End of the World' in the book Tales From Spaceship Earth, which is written with colleagues from Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. Finally, my article Winter-safe deterrence: The risk of nuclear winter and its challenge to deterrence is one of five articles selected for the shortlist for the 2016 Bernard Brodie Prize for the best article in Contemporary Security Policy over the previous year.
23 Dec 2015: I'm interviewed in a podcast Were the Paris Climate Talks a Success? by the Future of Life Institute.
27 Oct 2015: Confronting Future Catastrophic Threats to Humanity is now complete. This is the special issue of the journal Futures I co-edited with Bruce Tonn. Meanwhile, I continue my inquiry into nuclear power in my latest Bulletin column, Japan should restart more nuclear power plants in order to phase out coal.
29 Sep 2015: My special journal issue Confronting Future Catastrophic Threats to Humanity is near-complete. It's co-edited with Bruce Tonn, with 10 papers on topics including quantum computers, geoengineering, and nuclear winter. Tony Barrett and I have a new paper Risk analysis and risk management for the artificial superintelligence research and development process. My latest Bulletin column is A picture's power to prevent, on the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Dave Denkenberger and I are featured in an article in Gizmodo Meet the Engineers Trying to Prevent the Destruction of Humanity. And I have an article Antinuclear Austria should lead the way on nuclear power, on nuclear power as it relates to global warming and nuclear weapons risks.
27 Jul 2015: I am Co-Principal Investigator with Tony Barrett on an artificial intelligence safety grant funded by Elon Musk and the Open Philanthropy Project and administered by the Future of Life Institute. Roman Yampolskiy is also on the grant project team. The project title is "Evaluation of Safe Development Pathways for Artificial Superintelligence". I also have a new paper out, Winter-safe deterrence as a practical contribution to reducing nuclear winter risk: A reply forthcoming in Contemporary Security Policy. The paper is part of a symposium on my earlier paper Winter-safe deterrence: The risk of nuclear winter and its challenge to deterrence. I put up a new page with details of the extensive winter-safe deterrence debate. Finally, I have an article When robots kill in The Guardian's Political Science blog, co-authored with Trevor White, and a new Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist column, Breaking down the risk of nuclear deterrence failure.
17 Jun 2015: I have a new article The risk of nuclear winter published in Public Interest Reports, a publication of the Federation of American Scientists. I also have two new Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists columns: Should nuclear devices be used to stop asteroids? and Is stratospheric geoengineering worth the risk?. I'm featured in a Quartz article Meet the people out to stop humanity from destroying itself, discussing the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, the Oxford University Future of Humanity Institute and the Cambridge University Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
4 May 2015: I have five new research papers out. The far future argument for confronting catastrophic threats to humanity: Practical significance and alternatives, Confronting the threat of nuclear winter, and Isolated refuges for surviving global catastrophes are all forthcoming in Futures, in the special issue "Confronting Catastrophic Threats to Humanity" that I am co-editing with Bruce Tonn. The refuges paper is co-authored with David Denkenberger and Jacob Haqq-Misra. In addition, Resilience to global food supply catastrophes and Risk and resilience for unknown, unquantifiable, systemic, and unlikely/catastrophic threats are forthcoming in Environment, Systems, and Decisions, both in a special issue "Risk to Resilience: Emergent Threats and Large-Scale Systems" edited by James Lambert and Igor Linkov. The food supply paper is co-authored with Denkenberger, Joshua Pearce, Alan Robock, and Richelle Winkler. I am also featured in an hour-long episode of Conversations with Harold Channer, originally broadcast on the public access Manhattan Neighborhood Network.
19 Mar 2015: I have a new paper Winter-safe deterrence: The risk of nuclear winter and its challenge to deterrence forthcoming in Contemporary Security Policy. It is summarized in a new column Deterrence, without nuclear winter in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The paper evaluates the risk of nuclear winter and suggests how the risk could be minimized by switching deterrence regimes from large nuclear arsenals to other weapons. The paper has generated some controversy, mainly on its discussion of biological weapons. The Bulletin is hosting a roundtable discussion on this. In other news, I have an article Getting smart about global catastrophes published in Medium in a collection on the 92Y 7 Days of Genius panel discussion I participated in. Some multimedia from recent events is now online: audio of the 92Y Future of Life on Earth panel and video of the Caldicott nuclear extinction symposium. Finally, the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute is featured in a new article Aftermath published by the Future of Life Institute.
26 Feb 2015: I have posted a correction to the talk text of my Dec 2014 talk at the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons. To my embarrassment, I gave the wrong numbers for my own research on the probability of Russia-US inadvertent nuclear war. My latest Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists column is up: Stopping killer robots and other future threats. The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is an active campaign against fully autonomous weapons. It is a great example of how to confront threats from future technologies before those technologies exist.
5 Feb 2015: I have new paper coming out. The most extreme risks: Global catastrophes will be published in a book on edited by Vicki Bier. The paper presents some ethical and analytical challenges posed by global catastrophic risks and proposes an integrated assessment research agenda for studying the risks. Also, my latest Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists column is up: Support the Austria Pledge. The Pledge itself is online here, from the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.
22 Dec 2014: My review of the recent film Snowpiercer has been published in Journal of Sustainability Education. The talk text (pdf), slides (pdf) and video (YouTube, beginning at 49:40) of my talk 'What is the risk of nuclear war?' at the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons are now online.
21 Nov 2014: A new paper has been accepted for publication. The great downside dilemma for risky emerging technologies will appear Physica Scripta. The article introduces catastrophic emerging technologies risks to broad audiences, aimed in particular for undergraduates. The paper was written for a talk of the same title presented at the event Emerging technologies and the future of humanity, hosted by the Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), and is part of a series of papers based on presentations at the event. In other news, my second monthly column for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is now up: Nuclear war, the black swan we can never see. This discusses some nuclear war risk themes I'll be covering in my talk at upcoing the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons - see the conference program and speaker abstracts and biographies.
21 Oct 2014: I've begun writing a monthly column for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The first one is now up: The lesson of lake Toba. I also have a new article at IEET: Planetary boundaries and global catastrophic risk, summarizing my new paper Integrating the planetary boundaries and global catastrophic risk paradigms co-authored with with Itsuki Handoh. In other news, I'm just back from a trip to England, where I visited colleagues at the Centre for Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University and the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. Exciting things going on there. I'm honored to be speaking at the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons coming up in December, though it does mean I must miss the Society for Risk Analysis 2014 Annual Meeting. Finally, after 6 years of neglect, the photos page has been updated.
2 Aug 2014: A new paper has been accepted for publication. Integrating the planetary boundaries and global catastrophic risk paradigms, co-authored with Itsuki Handoh, will appear in Ecological Economics. Handoh and I came up with the idea for the paper when I visited him at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto in 2012. It has been a great collaboration and I am excited to see the paper coming out.
2 Jul 2014: I have two short review articles just accepted for publication. My review of the book Only One Chance: How Environmental Pollution Impairs Brain Development – and How to Protect the Brains of the Next Generation by Philippe Grandjean is forthcoming in Environmental Science & Policy. My review of the film Transcendence is forthcoming in Journal of Evolution and Technology.
2 Jun 2014: I put up a new events page with descriptions of various conferences and other events I have contributed to over the years. The events have been getting more interesting recently, so it finally seems worth keeping track. Also I am co-editing (with Bruce Tonn) a new special issue of the journal Futures, titled "Confronting Future Catastrophic Threats To Humanity". The submission deadline is 1 September. See the Call for Papers for details.
7 Mar 2014: I have two new articles at The Huffington Post: Best And Worst Case Scenarios for Ukraine Crisis: World Peace And Nuclear War and The Central Library Plan Deserves an Educated Public Debate. I am profiled in an article Evaluating the Risk of Events That Could End Civilization by Naveena Sadasivam, published at Scientific American blogs. And I will be speaking at a few upcoming events of note.
5 Nov 2013: Another a new popular article out. Our Final Invention: Is AI the Defining Issue for Humanity? has been published at Scientific American Blogs. It reviews the new book Our Final Invention by my colleague James Barrat. Also, the Osomocene Productions video Small World is now online at Vimeo and YouTube. And I am featured in two interviews. The first is by Nick Beckstead and Robert Wiblin of the Centre for Effective Altruism. The second is by Alexander Berger and Sean Conley of GiveWell.
19 Sep 2013: I have a new popular article out. Taming the gigaton gorilla: Using Syria diplomacy to help avoid U.S.-Russia nuclear war has been published at Huffington Post. Also, finishing up the Osomocene Productions website redesign and new video launch.
28 Jun 2013: A new paper has been accepted for publication. The ethics of global catastrophic risk from dual-use bioengineering, co-authored with Grant Wilson, will appear in Ethics in Biology, Engineering and Medicine. The paper was written for the 7th Annual International Conference on Ethical Issues In Biomedical Engineering. I also have a new magazine article out Making the universe a better place in Current Exchange/Technophilic Magazine. Meanwhile, I'm actively building up GCRI's online lectures program.
28 Mar 2013: A new paper has been accepted for publication. Adaptation to and recovery from global catastrophe, co-authored with Tim Maher, will appear in Sustainability. This article discusses a largely overlooked aspect of global catastrophic risk, namely the possibility that survivors could adapt to post-catastrophe conditions and recover civilization.
2 Mar 2013: I have a new popular article out. How to create an international treaty for emerging technologies, co-authored with Grant Wilson, has been published at IEET.
6 Feb 2013: I have two new popular articles. The first is in Scientific American Blogs: When global catastrophes collide: The climate engineering double catastrophe, which summarizes the journal paper Double catastrophe: Intermittent stratospheric geoengineering induced by societal collapse. The second is in IEET: Seven reasons for integrated emerging technologies governance.
9 Jan 2013: Two new papers have been accepted for publication. Analyzing and reducing the risks of inadvertent nuclear war between the United States and Russia, co-authored with Tony Barrett and Kelly Hostetler, will appear in Science and Global Security. Double catastrophe: Intermittent stratospheric geoengineering induced by societal collapse, co-authored with Timothy Maher and Jacob Haqq-Misra, will appear in Environment, Systems and Decisions.
5 Dec 2012: Grant Wilson and I have launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign Preventing Technological Disaster Through International Treaties. Please visit the page and support us! I also have a new paper accepted for publication. Teaching astrobiology in a sustainability course will appear in Journal of Sustainability Education.
6 Nov 2012: I have two new popular media articles discussing Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Sandy Hints At The Perils Of Global Catastrophe, in Scientific American, connects the impacts of Sandy in the US and Haiti to the challenge of surviving global catastrophes. Dedicated Bus Corridors Could Help Get New York Moving Again, in the Huffington Post, discusses the New York City transit situation.
26 Sep 2012: I have three new articles at FutureChallenges.org: Anticipating Catastrophe, Backwards Steps For American Democracy and The Planet Needs Our Help. Also the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute has a new About page and Email newsletter.
25 Jul 2012: A new paper has been accepted for publication. The benefits and harms of transmitting into space, co-authored with Jacob Haqq-Misra, Sanjoy Som, and Michael Busch will appear in Space Policy. I am also now back in the United States after 6 weeks in Australia and Japan for a wedding, a visit to the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto, and the World Congress on Risk in Sydney.
16 May 2012: I have a new article at FutureChallenges.org: Curing Aging Could Transform Society.
24 Apr 2012: At long last, my Ph.D. dissertation has been finalized: Discounting Across Space and Time in Climate Change Assessment. I also have four new articles at FutureChallenges.org: Earth Day, Conspiracy and World Government (reprinted at The Huffington Post), Global Disaster Recovery, When Our Technology Is Used Against Us and 'Friends' of the Environment. I've overhauled the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute website. And during 6 July to 17 July 2012, I will be visiting the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto.
13 Feb 2012: Myself and three colleagues at Blue Marble Space appear in yesterday's New York Times article What Do You Say to an Alien? by Sam Roberts.
13 Dec 2011: I am working on a launching new organization for global catastrophic risk, called the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. GCRI will lead research, education, and professional networking on global catastrophic risk. Also, a new paper has been accepted for publication. "Public scholarship student projects for introductory environmental courses" will appear in Journal of Geography in Higher Education. The paper was written with Destiny Aman and Andrei Israel, both fellow PhD students at Penn State Geography.
2 Sep 2011: My article Would contact with extraterrestrials benefit or harm humanity? A scenario analysis, co-authored with Shawn Domagal-Goldman and Jacob Haqq-Misra, has received a flurry of recent media coverage. The coverage is compiled at this Media Page. In other news, Jacob Haqq-Misra and I recently appeared as featured experts in the Discovery Channel TV special Alien Invasion: Are We Ready?. I also have two new articles at FutureChallenges.org: American Democracy And Global Climate Change and Activist Fatigue In The United States And The Arab World.
20 July 2011: I have a new research section up on global catastrophic risk (GCR). This section includes a new GCR bibliography (pdf) and info on the 2010 (pdf) and 2011 (pdf) GCR sessions I helped plan for the Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meetings. I am also now on the Board of Advisors of Blue Marble Space, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting international unity and progress through space exploration and understanding humanity's place in the universe.
22 April 2011: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "Climate change: Evidence of human causes and arguments for emissions reduction" will appear in Science and Engineering Ethics. The paper was written with Jacob Haqq-Misra and Chris Karmosky. The paper responds to climate skepticism in a broader review of climate science and ethics. It was originally written in 2009 but faced delays at the journal.
2 April 2011: I've completed an overhaul of the online content for Geog 30, the sustainability course I teach for Penn State. Take a look - it's great content! It's under a Creative Commons license, so you can adapt it for your own teaching or other purposes. Also, I'm helping organize more global catastrophic risk sessions for the 2011 Society for Risk Analysis conference. Contact me to get involved in that. Finally, I'm starting to connect with organizations working at the intersection of academics, arts, and environmental issues, such as PositiveFeedback.
11 Dec 2010: I helped organize a set of successful sessions on global catastrophic risk at last week's Society for Risk Analysis conference. See the write-up by Michael Anissimov. We're now discussing where to go from here. The basic idea is to have a broad conversation on GCR and how to reduce it including all relevant academic disciplines, government agencies, NGO's, private firms, and anyone else who can contribute productively. Please contact me to get involved.
19 Sep 2010: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "How long until human-level AI? Results from an expert assessment" will appear in Technological Forecasting & Social Change. The paper was written with Ben Goertzel and Ted Goertzel based on a survey of AGI experts at the AGI-09 conference. Also, beginning this fall I will be working as a visiting scholar at Columbia University's Center for Research on Environmental Decisions. For this I am based jointly at Penn State and Columbia. Finally, I will be defending my PhD dissertation on October 25 (2pm, Deike 541) and hopefully graduating in December.
21 Aug 2010: Two new papers have been accepted for publication. "Value typology in cost-benefit analysis" will appear in Environmental Values. The article serves as a "prequel" to my dissertation work on discounting. Also, my review of the film Inception has been accepted at Journal of Evolution and Technology. The article is available online in html and pdf formats. The review was written with Jim Thatcher, a fellow PhD student in Geography at Penn State. Finally, this week I begin teaching the online version of Penn State's Geography 30: Geographic Perspectives on Sustainability and Human-Environment Systems. I had previously helped develop the course.
8 Jul 2010: A new video overview of my paper Is humanity doomed? Insights from astrobiology is now available at YouTube. The video was produced by Mike Dawson from Penn State Geography. This is my first video overview to go up and thus is somewhat of a pilot effort.
7 Jun 2010: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "Space-time discounting in climate change adaptation" will appear in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. The article was written with my advisor, Bill Easterling, and is part of my Ph.D. dissertation - the first part to be accepted for publication.
25 May 2010: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "Intrinsic ethics regarding integrated assessment models for climate management" will appear in Science and Engineering Ethics. The article was written with seven other Penn State researchers affiliated with the Rock Ethics Institute as part of a broader project on Ethics in Environmental Education. A previous article from this project is "The role of the NSF Broader Impacts Criterion in enhancing research ethics pedagogy".
8 Mar 2010: Several website modifications are now up. There are new sections for my views on several aspects of ethics and for my magazine and online publications. Also, my academic publications page has been overhauled, now providing short summaries of each publication and linking to new html pages for most of them. Finally, I've revised my research page, linking to new pages on astrobiology, artificial general intelligence, and discounting. Hopefully these modifications will make this site more helpful.
13 Feb 2010: Two new articles out. Is humanity doomed? Insights from astrobiology has been published in the new open-access journal Sustainability. How Long Till Human-Level AI? What Do the Experts Say? has been published in h+ Magazine. h+ is short for "humanity plus" and is a symbol of transhumanism. I'm not a transhumanist myself but I do consider transhumanist topcs such as AI to be important. The new article was written with Ben Goertzel and Ted Goertzel as part of a broader project on artificial general intelligence. See article tweets at TechBlips.
30 Jan 2010: Check out the upcoming March 2010 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine for "Where have all the aliens gone? Sustainability may explain the absence of extraterrestrials", an article I wrote with Jacob Haqq-Misra. The article is based on our 'Sustainability Solution' to the Fermi Paradox (preprint (pdf)). At S&T's request we will not be posting preprints online. Buy the issue; it's a great magazine!
24 Dec 2009: So far, 18 of my 174 Geography 30 students have had their writing published - see this list. Meanwhile, my op-ed on the course, "Collaboration is key to sustainability", was published in the Centre Daily Times on December 1.
27 Nov 2009: Next week my Geography 30 students present their course projects at State College Borough Hall. The presentations are Tuesday (1 Dec) and Thursday (3 Dec) from 5-9pm. Full details here.
29 Sep 2009: My review of the film District 9 has been accepted at Journal of Evolution and Technology, available online here. Also, an article "Where have all the aliens gone? Sustainability may explain the absence of extraterrestrials" will appear in the popular magazine Sky & Telescope, probably in January 2010. The article is co-written by Jacob Haqq-Misra and is based on our 'Sustainability Solution' to the Fermi Paradox (preprint (pdf)). At S&T's request we will not be posting preprints online. Buy the issue; it's a great magazine!
2 Sep 2009: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "The role of the NSF Broader Impacts Criterion in enhancing research ethics pedagogy" will appear in Social Epistemology. See the summary (pdf) and the full paper (pdf). The article was written with seven other Penn State researchers affiliated with the Rock Ethics Institute as part of a broader project on Ethics in Environmental Education.
22 Aug 2009: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "Description, prescription and the choice of discount rates" will appear in Ecological Economics. See the summary (pdf) and the full paper (pdf). This fall I am again teaching Geography 30 (Geographic Perspectives on Sustainability and Human-Environment Systems) at Penn State while helping the Dutton Institute develop an online version of the course. See also the Geog 30 Fall 2009 course blog.
20 Jul 2009: An op-ed, "Senate should pass Clean Energy and Security Act", has been published in the Centre Daily Times. This is a different version of "Senate should pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act" published in the Odessa American (no online version) and the Asheville Citizen-Times.
14 Jul 2009: I just signed up for a Twitter account. I'll admit I'm a bit skeptical about the merits of Twitter, but I'm willing to give it a shot. Also, a new op-ed, "Senate should pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act", has been published in the Odessa American (no online version) and the Asheville Citizen-Times. It was distributed through the American Geographical Society Media Center.
11 Jul 2009: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "Universalist ethics in extraterrestrial encounter" will appear in Acta Astronautica. See the summary (pdf) and the full paper (pdf). And just in time for District 9...
3 Jul 2009: The summer Geography 30 has ended. Students submitted content from their course projects to various public forums. Two are available online: Cut meat consumption by Christina Ferry and Help the environment and yourself - don't drive by Alexis Roseman. I will teach the course again in the fall, with 178 students instead of 9.
9 Apr 2009: A new op-ed, "It's time to establish a geography department", published at the University of Rochester Campus Times. html * pdf (p.7)
2 Apr 2009: This summer I will be teaching Geography 30 (Geographic Perspectives on Sustainability and Human-Environment Systems) at Penn State.
20 Feb 2009: Summaries of the two new astrobiology papers are now available. For "Cost-benefit analysis of space exploration: Some ethical considerations", see the summary (pdf) and the full paper (pdf). For "The 'Sustainability Solution' to the Fermi Paradox", see the summary (pdf) and the full paper (pdf).
12 Feb 2009: Two new papers accepted for publication, both related to astrobiology. The first, "Cost-benefit analysis of space exploration: Some ethical considerations", will appear in Space Policy. See the preprint (pdf). The second, "The 'Sustainability Solution' to the Fermi Paradox", will appear in Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. See the preprint (pdf). The Sustainability Solution paper is written with Jacob Haqq-Misra, an astrobiologist/meteorologist here at Penn State.
4 Jan 2009: I'm now on the Lifeboat Foundation Advisory Board- see my profile there. Lifeboat is a nonprofit working on global catastrophic risk reduction.
13 October 2008: A review of the book Global Catastrophic Risks has been accepted for publication at Risk Analysis. See the preprint (pdf).
2 October 2008: A new paper, "The 'Hidden' Social Costs of Forestry Offsets", with Colin Hunt from the University of Queensland, has been accepted for publication at Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. See the preprint (pdf), a one-page summary (pdf), and the MASGC site. I also have a new op-ed out, "Reducing Catastrophic Risk Through Integrative Assessment", published at the Hawaii Reporter (link-html) and the Daily Camera (Boulder, CO) (link-html). The article was distributed through the American Geographical Society Media Center- see their archive: pdf.
27 July 2008: Just back from two weeks in Europe surrounding the Oxford Global Catastrophic Risks conference. The conference did an excellent job of bringing together an interdisciplinary group of researchers on this most important topic. I look forward to continued involvement in the GCR community.
13 May 2008: Just completed a new website redesign. My paper "Better to exist: a reply to Benatar" has recently been accepted for publication in the Journal of Medical Ethics; a preprint (pdf) is online. Over the next few weeks, I am attending meetings with the CMU Climate Decision Making Center in Pittsburgh and the Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship in St. Louis. This summer I will be primarily in State College working on various research projects.
Created 27 Jul 2007 * Updated 27 Mar 2024