Our primary aims are:
(i) to study extreme risks associated with emerging and future technological advances, and global anthropogenic impacts, with the goal of understanding these risks, and developing prevention and mitigation strategies for specific risks.
(ii) to develop a methodological toolkit to aid us in identifying and evaluating future extreme technological risks (ETRs) in advance, and in taking the necessary steps ahead of time.
(iii) to examine issues surrounding the perception and analysis of these risks in the scientific community, the public and civil society, and develop strategies for working fruitfully with industry and policymakers on avoiding risks while making progress on beneficial technologies.
(iv) to foster a reflective, interdisciplinary, global community of academics, technologists and policymakers examining individual aspects of ETR, but coming together to integrate their insights.
(v) to focus in particular on risks that are (a) globally catastrophic in scale (b) plausible but poorly characterized or understood (c) capable of being studied rigorously or addressed (d) clearly play to CSER’s strengths (interdisciplinarity, convening power, policy/industry links) (e) require long-range thinking. In other words, extreme risks where we can really expect to achieve something.
Last updated 2017
