Genetic Engineering Is Moving Very Fast

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Genetic engineering is moving very fast. It's possible to a, a print danda and toa, for example, uplit a sequence and have the the dena that re shipped to you a for very low costs. And a des top printers are increasingly going to be become available. There has been an interesting proposal that any of these printingdina printing outfits should have built into the machinery a system that checks essential segments of risky sequences. This would then make difficult for people to printbug such as the nineten itan influenzo strine yes.

We’re pretty well-calibrated when it comes to dealing with common, everyday-level setbacks. But our brains aren’t naturally equipped for dealing with unlikely but world-catastrophic disasters. Yet such threats are real, both natural and human-induced. We need to collectively get better at anticipating and preparing for them, at the level of political action. Andrew Leigh is an academic and author who now serves in the Parliament of Australia. We discuss how to move the conversation about existential risks from the ivory tower to implementation in real policies.

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Andrew Leigh received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a member of the Australian House of Representatives representing Fenner. He was previously a professor of economics at Australian National University, and has served as Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities. His recent book is What’s the Worst That Could Happen? Existential Risk and Extreme Politics.

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