Download PDF from FXQI This article, published in an FQXi Essay Contest, discusses the importance of avoiding global catastrophe as a precursor to humanity expanding beyond planet Earth. The article begins as follows: Life is a marvel of thermodynamics. Living things...
On March 18, Russia formally annexed the Ukrainian province of Crimea. Russian troops without official markings occupied the Crimean peninsula earlier in the month after Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country. The Crimean peninsula was part of Russia...
Google Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil said at a CIO Network conference that we will develop “human-level” artificial intelligence by the year 2029. Kurzweil—who argued in his book The Singularity Is Near that advances in artificial intelligence will lead to...
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists decided to leave the small hand of its symbolic “Doomsday Clock” at five minutes to midnight. The amount of time left until midnight represents how close we are to global disaster. The clock’s hands were set at two minutes to...
Russian President Vladimir Putin told senior Russian officials that long-range conventional high- precision weapons could provide an alternative to nuclear deterrence. Long-range conventional weapons give Russia a conventional means of striking discrete targets...
