Huw Price led a workshop titled “Towards A New Science of Existential Risk”, as part of the “Evidence, Ideology, and Orthodoxy: Science in the University and the Public Sphere” conference at Arizona State University on the 6th-8th of February. The workshop investigated efforts to establish new approaches to studying existential threats. The event was co-sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
“This session will investigate efforts to establish new approaches to studying ‘existential threat’ – it will ask what sort of science can make sense of such questions and with what sort of engagement with wider publics. It will explore the political role of university scientists who are engaged in public discussions about existential risk, climate change, for example. It will also explore the tensions between a ‘science of existential threat,’ and the role of universities in advancing technologies with the potential for new extinction-level risks—such dangers have been suggested from progress in AI, from developments in biotechnology and artificial life, and from nanotechnology.”
