FBL16: Toby Ord - Biotech, AI, & The End of Humanity

This week our guest is Toby Ord, a senior researcher at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, where he focuses on existential risk. Toby recently released his book Precipice: Existential Risk & the Future of Humanity, which explores the many threats capable not only of ending human civilization, but even causing our entire species to go extinct. It may seem like an unrealistic concern out of a sci-fi movie, but Toby suggests humanity has roughly a 1 in 6 chance of destroying ourselves within the next century.

In this episode, we discuss how Toby arrived at this number and the deeper details of the threats that are facing us, with a particular focus on biotech and artificial intelligence, which Toby views as the most prominent areas of concern.

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Host: Steven Parton // Music by: Amine el Filali