The Effect of Forecasting on the Future of the World

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A catastrophe is an event that kills just a mere 10% of humans in the world. But extinction would go even further, wiping out everyone with the possible exception of at most 5,000 lucky people. And we have to provide forecasts and likelihood of everything from terminal events like AI or nuclear apocalypse. This could give you a sense of which types of people are better at predicting short-term events such as how fast AI progress might go for example.

Wiping out a tenth of the world? Possible. Wiping out all of humanity? Less likely, but not entirely impossible. We examine how two groups of experts have arrived at these worrying predictions about AI. Education is giving hope to inmates in a maximum security prison in New York (11:17). And, on Britain’s working men’s clubs which have nurtured rock bands for decades (18:00).

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