The porter’s lodge is like an airlock, apparently sealed from the tribulations of everyday life. But inside the college, pacing the flagstones of what is called – all modesty aside – Great Court, are four men who do not take it for granted that those undergraduates actually have a future. They are the four founders of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk CSER, and they are in the business of “horizon scanning”. Together, they are on alert for what they sometimes call “low-probability-but-high-consequence events”, and sometimes – when they forget to be reassuring – “catastrophe”.
The scientific A-Team saving the world from killer viruses, rogue AI and the paperclip apocalypse
The porter’s lodge is like an airlock, apparently sealed from the tribulations of everyday life. But inside the college, pacing the flagstones of what is called – all modesty aside – Great Court, are four men who do not take it for granted that those undergraduates actually have a future. They are the four founders…
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