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This article provides an overview of intimate threats: a class of privacy threats that can arise within our families, romantic partnerships, close friendships, and caregiving relationships. Many common assumptions about privacy are upended…
The increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) systems make it ever more important that we interpret their internals to ensure that their intentions are aligned with human values. Yet there is reason to believe that misaligned…
We present a review of the literature on the subject of a possible collision between the Earthand a meteorite or comet. We emphasize the global effects when sufficient energy is involved.We propose several types of human actions adapted to…
Large parts of professional human communication proceed in a request-reply fashion, whereby requests contain specifics of the information desired while replies can deliver the required information. However, time limitations often force…
The most significant periodicities in the terrestrial impact crater record are due to the human-signal: the bias of assigning integer values for the crater ages. This bias seems to have eluded the proponents and opponents of real…
The Fermi paradox has given rise to various attempts to explain why no evidence of extraterrestrial civilisations was found so far on Earth and in our Solar System. Here, we present a dynamical model for the development of such…
Interstellar exploration will advance human knowledge and culture in multiple ways. Scientifically, it will advance our understanding of the interstellar medium, stellar astrophysics, planetary science and astrobiology. In addition,…
The ease of interstellar rocket travel is an issue with implications for the long term fate of our own and other civilizations and for the much-debated number of technological civilizations in the Galaxy. We show that the physical barrier…
Invention of artificial general intelligence is predicted to cause a shift in the trajectory of human civilization. In order to reap the benefits and avoid pitfalls of such powerful technology it is important to be able to control it.…
Valid empirical studies build confidence in scientific findings. Fortunately, it is now common for software engineering researchers to consider threats to validity when designing their studies and to discuss them as part of their…
People form impressions of their dialogue partners, be they other people or machines, based on cues drawn from their communicative style. Recent work has suggested that the gulf between people's expectations and the reality of CUI…
We consider some implications of the much-discussed circumstellar habitable zones around M-dwarf stars for the conventionally understood radio SETI. We argue that the flaring nature of these stars would further adversely impact local…
The rapid development of AI-mediated communication technologies (AICTs), which are digital tools that use AI to augment interpersonal messages, has raised concerns about the future of interpersonal trust and prompted discussions about…
Many of us researchers take extra measures to control for known-unknowns. However, unknown-unknowns can, at best, be negligible, but otherwise, they could produce unreliable data that might have dire consequences in real-life downstream…
Under the headline "AI safety", a wide-reaching issue is being discussed, whether in the future some "superhuman artificial intelligence" / "superintelligence" could could pose a threat to humanity. In addition, the late Steven Hawking…
Given the fast rise of increasingly autonomous artificial agents and robots, a key acceptability criterion will be the possible moral implications of their actions. In particular, intelligent persuasive systems (systems designed to…
International cooperation is common in AI research, including between geopolitical rivals. While many experts advocate for greater international cooperation on AI safety to address shared global risks, some view cooperation on AI with…
Deep learning has emerged as a strong and efficient framework that can be applied to a broad spectrum of complex learning problems which were difficult to solve using the traditional machine learning techniques in the past. In the last few…
What would SETI Beacon transmitters be like if built by civilizations with a variety of motivations, but who cared about cost? We studied in a companion paper how, for fixed power density in the far field, we could build a cost-optimum…
As stories of human-AI interactions continue to be highlighted in the news and research platforms, the challenges are becoming more pronounced, including potential risks of overreliance, cognitive offloading, social and emotional…