Defunding the fossil fuel industry is one of the biggest factors in addressing climate change and lowering carbon emissions. But with international financing and powerful lobbyists on their side, fossil fuel companies often seem out of public reach. On Not Cool episode 24, Ariel is joined by Ellen Quigley and Natalie Jones, who explain why
While a single extreme weather event can wreak considerable havoc, it’s becoming increasingly clear that such events often don’t occur in isolation. Not Cool Episode 11 focuses on compound weather events: what they are, why they’re dangerous, and how we’ve failed to prepare for them. Ariel is joined by Jakob Zscheischler, an Earth system scientist
Most of us working on catastrophic and existential threats focus on trying to prevent them — not on figuring out how to survive the aftermath. But what if, despite everyone’s best efforts, humanity does undergo such a catastrophe? This month’s podcast is all about what we can do in the present to ensure humanity’s survival
On the eighth episode of Not Cool, Ariel tackles the topic of climate policy from the local level up through the federal. She’s joined by Suzanne Jones: public policy veteran, climate activist, and current mayor of Boulder, Colorado. Suzanne explains the climate threats facing communities like Boulder, the measures local governments can take to combat the
FLI is excited to announce the latest in our podcast line-up: Not Cool: A Climate Podcast! In this new series, hosted by Ariel Conn, we’ll hear directly from climate experts from around the world, as they answer every question we can think of about the climate crisis. And we’ve launched it just in time for
Discussions of Chinese artificial intelligence frequently center around the trope of a U.S.-China arms race. On this month’s FLI podcast, we’re moving beyond the arms race narrative and taking a closer look at the realities of AI in China and what they really mean for the United States. Experts Helen Toner and Elsa Kania, both of
Does the climate crisis pose an existential threat? And is that even the best way to formulate the question, or should we be looking at the relationship between the climate crisis and existential threats differently? In this month’s FLI podcast, Ariel was joined by Simon Beard and Haydn Belfield of the University of Cambridge’s Center for
Nuclear weapons testing is mostly a thing of the past: The last nuclear weapon test explosion on US soil was conducted over 25 years ago. But how much longer can nuclear weapons testing remain a taboo that almost no country will violate? In an official statement from the end of May, the Director of the
As we grapple with questions about AI safety and ethics, we’re implicitly asking something else: what type of a future do we want, and how can AI help us get there? In this month’s podcast, Ariel spoke with Ashley Llorens, the Founding Chief of the Intelligent Systems Center at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory,
It’s not just about the natural world. The side effects of climate change remain relatively unknown, but we can expect a warming world to impact every facet of our lives. In fact, as recent research shows, global warming is already affecting our mental and physical well-being, and this impact will only increase. Climate change
Why are we so concerned about lethal autonomous weapons? Ariel spoke to four experts –– one physician, one lawyer, and two human rights specialists –– all of whom offered their most powerful arguments on why the world needs to ensure that algorithms are never allowed to make the decision to take a life. It was
In this special two-part podcast Ariel Conn is joined by Max Tegmark for a conversation with Dr. Matthew Meselson, biologist and Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University. Dr. Meselson began his career with an experiment that helped prove Watson and Crick’s hypothesis on the structure and replication of DNA. He
In this special two-part podcast Ariel Conn is joined by Max Tegmark for a conversation with Dr. Matthew Meselson, biologist and Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University. Dr. Meselson began his career with an experiment that helped prove Watson and Crick’s hypothesis on the structure and replication of DNA.
Every January, we like to look back over the past 12 months at the progress that’s been made in the world of artificial intelligence. Welcome to our annual “AI breakthroughs” podcast, 2018 edition. Ariel was joined for this retrospective by researchers Roman Yampolskiy and David Krueger. Roman is an AI Safety researcher and professor at
Our phones, our cars, our televisions, our homes: they’re all getting smarter. Artificial intelligence is already inextricably woven into everyday life, and its impact will only grow in the coming years. But while this development inspires much discussion among members of the scientific community, public opinion on artificial intelligence has remained relatively unknown. Artificial Intelligence:
It may seem like we at FLI spend a lot of our time worrying about existential risks, but it’s helpful to remember that we don’t do this because we think the world will end tragically: We address issues relating to existential risks because we’re so confident that if we can overcome these threats, we can
Humanity is at a turning point. For the first time in history, we have the technology to completely obliterate ourselves. But we’ve also created boundless possibilities for all life that could enable just about any brilliant future we can imagine. Humanity could erase itself with a nuclear war or a poorly designed AI, or we
FLI is pleased to announce that we’ve signed the Safe Face Pledge, an effort to ensure facial analysis technologies are not used as weapons or in other situations that can lead to abuse or bias. The pledge was initiated and led by Joy Buolamwini, an AI researcher at MIT and founder of the Algorithmic Justice
A Chinese researcher recently made international news with claims that he had edited the first human babies using CRISPR. In doing so, he violated international ethics standards, and he appears to have acted without his funders or his university knowing. But this is only the latest example of biological research triggering ethical concerns. Gain-of-function
“There are basically two choices. We’re going to massively change everything we are doing on this planet, the way we work together, the actions we take, the way we run our economy, and the way we behave towards each other and towards the planet and towards everything that lives on this planet. Or we sit
