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Archive for the ‘existential risks’ category: Page 76

Jun 30, 2018

Elon Musk: This is why we have to build civilizations in space

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, existential risks, space travel, sustainability

“Humanity is not perfect, but it’s all we’ve got,” the SpaceX and Tesla boss said.

To safeguard human life requires moving beyond the blue planet, in Musk’s view, because earth is likely to become uninhabitable.

“There will be some eventual extinction event” if humans stay on earth forever, Musk said in an article published in academic journal New Space, which was published online in June 2017.

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Jun 29, 2018

Kick Asteroid

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

Our new Kickstarter project lets you help save the Earth from an asteroid impact! Let’s go #KickAsteroid! https://planet.ly/kickasteroid

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Jun 25, 2018

UF-oh no? We may be the only intelligent life out there, study finds

Posted by in categories: alien life, existential risks

If intelligent life is so likely to exist elsewhere in the universe, why haven’t we found it? Well, the chances of us coming across extraterrestrials are not looking good, according to a new study.

Scientists from the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University have revealed that we are probably the only advanced civilization out there, although they can’t say for sure. The team came to their conclusion after realizing that Fermi’s paradox and its supporting theories are somewhat flawed. The paradox is the conflict between the probability that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe and the lack of evidence of such.

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Jun 24, 2018

Tasmanian Tiger Could Come Back From Extinction

Posted by in category: existential risks

The Tasmanian Tiger could come back from extinction thanks to new technology (yes, really)! 🐅

#sun7 | yahoo7.com.au/sunrise

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Jun 1, 2018

Synthetic molecule super-effective against superbugs

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, existential risks, robotics/AI

Forget zombies or killer robots – the most likely doomsday scenario in the near future is the threat of superbugs. Bacteria are evolving resistance to our best antibiotics at an alarming rate, so developing new ones is a crucial area of study. Now, inspired by a natural molecule produced by marine microorganisms, researchers at North Carolina State University have synthesized a new compound that shows promising antibacterial properties against resistant bugs.

Decades of overuse and overprescription of antibiotics has led to more and more bacteria becoming resistant to them, and the situation is so dire that a recent report warned that they could be killing up to 10 million people a year by 2050. Worse still, the bugs seem to be on schedule, with the ECDC reporting that our last line of defense has already begun to fail in large numbers.

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May 28, 2018

IBM’s head of Watson likes Elon Musk but ‘hates’ A.I. scaremongering

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, existential risks, robotics/AI

IBM’s David Kenny suggested that artificial intelligence doomsday warnings from the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk were overblown.

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May 25, 2018

Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos advocates a return to the moon and calls for collaborative effort in space

Posted by in categories: existential risks, space travel

Staying on Earth “is not necessarily extinction, but the alternative is stasis,” Bezos said during an onstage discussion Friday night with Geekwire journalist Alan Boyle at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles.

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May 14, 2018

What If an Asteroid Hit the Earth?

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

Would we suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs?

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May 10, 2018

How Frightened Should We Be of A.I.?

Posted by in categories: existential risks, robotics/AI, transportation

Many people in tech point out that artificial narrow intelligence, or A.N.I., has grown ever safer and more reliable—certainly safer and more reliable than we are. (Self-driving cars and trucks might save hundreds of thousands of lives every year.) For them, the question is whether the risks of creating an omnicompetent Jeeves would exceed the combined risks of the myriad nightmares—pandemics, asteroid strikes, global nuclear war, etc.—that an A.G.I. could sweep aside for us.


Thinking about artificial intelligence can help clarify what makes us human—for better and for worse.

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May 9, 2018

Where are the aliens? Solutions to Fermi Paradox

Posted by in categories: astronomy, cosmology, existential risks, first contact, lifeboat

The Fermi Paradox poses an age-old question: With light and radio waves skipping across the galaxy, why has there never been any convincing evidence of other life in the universe—or at least another sufficiently advanced civilization that uses radio? After all, evidence of intelligent life requires only that some species modulates a beacon (intentionally or unintentionally) in a fashion that is unlikely to be caused by natural phenomena.

The Fermi Paradox has always fascinated me, perhaps because SETI spokesperson, Carl Sagan was my astronomy professor at Cornell and—coincidentally—Sagan and Stephen Spielberg dedicated a SETI radio telescope at Oak Ridge Observatory around the time that I moved from Ithaca to New England. It’s a 5 minute drive from my new home. In effect, two public personalities followed me to Massachusetts.

What is SETI?

In November of 1984, SETI was chartered as a non-profit corporation with a single goal. In seeking to answer to the question “Are we alone?” it fuels the Drake equation by persuading radio telescopes to devote time to the search for extraterrestrial life and establishing an organized and systematic approach to partitioning, prioritizing, gathering and mining signal data.

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