As we move towards a more automated world, tech companies are increasingly faced with decisions about how they want — and don’t want — their products to be used. Perhaps most critically, the sector is in the process of negotiating its relationship to the military, and to the development of lethal autonomous weapons in particular. Some […]
As artificial intelligence works its way into industries like healthcare and finance, governments around the world are increasingly investing in another of its applications: autonomous weapons systems. Many are already developing programs and technologies that they hope will give them an edge over their adversaries, creating mounting pressure for others to follow suite. These investments appear […]
On April 9th, Dr. Matthew Meselson received the $50,000 Future of Life Award at a ceremony at the University of Boulder’s Conference on World Affairs. Dr. Meselson was a driving force behind the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, an international ban that has prevented one of the most inhumane forms of warfare known to humanity. April […]
This Women’s History Month, FLI has been celebrating with Women for the Future, a campaign to honor the women who’ve made it their job to create a better world for us all. The field of existential risk mitigation is largely male-dominated, so we wanted to emphasize the value –– and necessity –– of female voices in our […]
2019 Statement to the United Nations in Support of a Ban on LAWS The following statement was read on the floor of the United Nations during the March, 2019 CCW meeting, in which delegates discussed a possible ban on lethal autonomous weapons. Thank you chair for your leadership. The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is […]
For the first two weeks in December, the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) gathered in Katowice, Poland for the 24th annual Conference of the Parties (COP24). The UNFCCC defines its ultimate goal as “preventing ‘dangerous’ human interference with the climate system,” and its objective for COP24 was to design […]
In both 2016 and 2017, genome editing made it into the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community. (Update: it was also listed in the 2019 Threat Assessment.) One of biotechnology’s most promising modern developments, it had now been deemed a danger to US national security – and then, after two years, it was […]
The Paris Climate Agreement seeks to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial temperatures. In the best case scenario, warming would go no further than 1.5 degrees. Many scientists see this as an impossible goal. A recent study by Peter Cox et al. postulates that, given a twofold increase in atmospheric […]
Dubbed “the evil twin of global warming,” ocean acidification is a growing crisis that poses a threat to both water-dwelling species and human communities that rely on the ocean for food and livelihood. Since pre-industrial times, the ocean’s pH has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1—a change that may seem insignificant, but actually represents a 30 […]
Late last month, North Korea launched a ballistic missile test whose trajectory arced over Japan. And this past weekend, Pyongyang flaunted its nuclear capabilities with an underground test of what it claims was a hydrogen bomb: a more complicated—and powerful—alternative to the atomic bombs it has previously tested. Though North Korea has launched rockets over […]
