Lifeboat Foundation
The Lifeboat Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including
The Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, new methods to combat viruses (such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods), effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.
The Lifeboat Foundation was formed with the ethical premise that decreasing the likelihood of human extinction is the activity with the most positive utility on the planet today. In recent years, several prominent public figures have stepped forward strongly in favor of mitigating extinction risks. Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom writes, “For standard utilitarians, priority number one, two, three and four should consequently be to reduce existential risk. The utilitarian imperative “Maximize expected aggregate utility!” can be simplified to the maxim “Minimize existential risk!”. [1]
Administration and Advisory Boards
The President and Founder of the Lifeboat Foundation is Eric Klien, its International
Spokesperson is Philippe van Nedervelde, its Fundraising Director, North America is
The organization also has a very large Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), composed of 410 members as of October 2007. This
includes philosophers, economists, biologists, nanotechnologists, AI researchers, educators, policy experts, engineers, lawyers,
ethicists, futurists, neuroscientists, physicists, and space experts. The SAB includes Ray
Kurzweil and
Lifeboat Foundation Programs
The Lifeboat Foundation's Scientific Advisory Board is working on a number of programs to assess risks, negate them ("shields"), and survive catastrophic events ("preservers"):
Many future programs are in the works, including programs to prevent risks from AI, particle accelerator mishaps, and to maintain communications networks in case of disaster.
See also
Related topics:
- existential risk
molecular nanotechnology utility fog - seed AI
- space colonization
space and survival - biosecurity
- technological singularity
References
- ^ Nick Bostrom, "Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development", Preprint, Utilitas Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 308-314
External links
- Lifeboat Foundation
- Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios by Nick Bostrom
- Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development by Nick Bostrom
- How can the human race survive the next hundred years? - question on Yahoo Answers by Stephen Hawking
- Why the future doesn't need us by Bill Joy
- It Was Fun While It Lasted by Martin Rees
- Biowar for Dummies by Paul Boutin
- Accelerating Future - regularly updated blog that discusses existential risks
- [1] - the Atlantis Project. The earlier efforts of Eric Klien
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