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Future of Life Institute

@FLIxrisk

Aug 6

@John_Birks

FLI proudly announces the winners of the 2022 Future of Life Award.

They are @John_Birks, Paul Crutzen, Jeannie Peterson, @AlanRobock, Carl Sagan, Georgiy Stenchikov, Brian Toon and Richard Turco.

Find out more about the winners here: futureoflife.org/future-of-life…

Hear their story👇

All eight of these heroes win the Future of Life Award for their roles in discovering and popularising nuclear winter.

We hope that drawing attention to this work will help to refocus attention on nuclear weapons, as governments meet to at the #NPTRevCon this month. (2/6)

Nuclear winter is the severe and prolonged global climatic cooling likely to result from a nuclear war. Masses of soot & smoke, lofted into the stratosphere by firestorms, would envelop the planet, blocking the sun.

Blocked sunlight = agricultural failure = global famine. (3/6)

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Future of Life Institute

@FLIxrisk

Mar 28

It seems harder than ever to retain positive visions for our world's future.

But this is precisely why it matters more than ever that we create and share these visions.

The FLI Worldbuilding Contest deadline is in less than 3 weeks, on April 15th. (1/5)

worldbuild.ai

The contest welcomes worldbuilds that are aspirational. But when we specified that the worldbuilds must be positive, we were under no illusions about how unlikely it seems, today, that in 20 years' time, things will somehow be any better.

Yet this can be your motivation. (2/5)

Remembering that we also stipulated these builds be 'plausible', in your timelines and answers to our prompts, you will need to think about how the world of 2045 might have (temporarily, at least) overcome recurrent human problems like war, the nuclear risk, and disease. (3/5)

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Future of Life Institute

@FLIxrisk

Mar 10

We have posted a lot in the past about nuclear close-calls, when a misunderstanding, a malfunction or a misreading brought us to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe. Many of these near-misses occurred at times of heightened tension, times like now. (1/6)

futureoflife.org/background/nuc…

Take the Suez Crisis, 1956. British and French forces had attacked Egypt at the Suez Canal.Soviet leaders had proposed combining forces with the U.S. to stop these smaller powers, even warning London and Paris that conventional missiles were now pointing at them.(2/6)

Then NORAD received intelligence of the following:

1. unidentified aircraft flying over Turkey, with Turkish air force on alert
2. 100 Soviet MIG-15s flying over Syria
3. a British Canberra bomber shot down over Syria
4. the Soviet fleet moving through the Dardanelles.

(3/6)

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Future of Life Institute

@FLIxrisk

Mar 9

After the USSR collapsed, the fear of nuclear war faded to something of a distant memory in the public consciousness.

The return of nukes to headlines may have come as something of a shock. Here are some things worth remembering, as we come back to terms with this threat. (1/11)

Firstly, when we think of Cold War paranoia, we usually imagine this boiled down to fearing, 'what if they get us before we get them?'. In other words, there was a presumption that if one's country could only pre-empt the enemy's strike, then the issue would be solved. (2/11)

But in the 1980s, climatologists worked out that the aftermath of any substantial nuclear war was potentially destructive to all life on earth, not just the direct targets. As Carl Sagan put it, any nation launching a strike thereby commits suicide, due to nuclear winter. (3/11)

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Future of Life Institute

@FLIxrisk

Nov 30, 2021

@axios

In this @axios article, @bryanrwalsh stated, 'the AI military race has begun'. This is potentially disastrous, for three main reasons. (1/6)

axios.com/ai-future-unit…

1. An arms race increases the risk of conflict escalation between military powers. US officials are clear about their push for 'superiority', to stay ahead of the Chinese. Meanwhile, Putin says, 'whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world'. (2/6)

2. Walsh notes that while the US military claims it will retain human oversight over weapon systems, 'the faster and smarter AI becomes, the thinner the leash of human control may become'. An arms race, which prioritizes speed over safety, forces hasty, unwise developments. (3/6)

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Future of Life Institute

@FLIxrisk

Nov 29, 2021

In theory, a single person could activate (many) thousands of Slaughterbots; the swarm could target individuals, the structural beams of skyscrapers in dense cities, or perhaps a research lab handling deadly viruses.

Slaughterbots have the potential for mass destruction. (1/4)

Basic drone swarms are already here. Israel put one into action in June, using an AI-guided drone swarm to find, select, and attack Hamas militants in Gaza. (2/4)

newscientist.com/article/228265…

@David_Hambling

In January, the Indian military gave a demonstration of a 75-drone swarm destroying simulated targets in explosive kamikaze attacks. As @David_Hambling noted, 'the event is a clear indication of how the technology is developing — and proliferating.'
(3/4)

forbes.com/sites/davidham…

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