Related papers: The transformative value of liberating Mars
Technology is increasingly shaping our social structures and is becoming a driving force in altering human biology. Besides, human activities already proved to have a significant impact on the Earth system which in turn generates complex…
Experimental evolution has yielded surprising insights into human history and evolution by shedding light on the roles of chance and contingency in history and evolution, and on the deep evolutionary roots of cooperation, conflict and kin…
Decades of scientific inquiry have sought to understand how evolution fosters cooperation, a concept seemingly at odds with the belief that evolution should produce rational, self-interested individuals. Most previous work has focused on…
The moral value of liberty is a central concept in our inference system when it comes to taking a stance towards controversial social issues such as vaccine hesitancy, climate change, or the right to abortion. Here, we propose a novel…
Explainable AI (XAI) aims to bridge the gap between complex algorithmic systems and human stakeholders. Current discourse often examines XAI in isolation as either a technological tool, user interface, or policy mechanism. This paper…
A foundational model has been developed based on trends built from empirical data of space exploration and computing power through the first six plus decades of the Space Age which projects earliest possible launch dates for human-crewed…
While people generally trust AI to make decisions in various aspects of their lives, concerns arise when AI is involved in decisions with significant moral implications. The absence of a precise mathematical framework for moral reasoning…
Our world is strongly driven by technological developments that continuously create new markets and shape individual taste and choice. The scale of dissemination of the most recent technological breakthroughs and the capability of creating…
Recent research suggests that it may be possible to build conscious AI systems now or in the near future. Conscious AI systems would arguably deserve moral consideration, and it may be the case that large numbers of conscious systems could…
A general sketch of how the problem of space dimensionality depends on Anthropic arguments is presented. A new argument in favor of a stable scenario for space dimensionality for a time scale longer than that required for the existence of…
While many see the prospect of autonomous machines as threatening, autonomy may be exactly what we want in a superintelligent machine. There is a sense of autonomy, deeply rooted in the ethical literature, in which an autonomous machine is…
When it comes to conversations about funding, the questions of whether the United States should be spending its resources on space-based research often rears its head. Opponents of the idea tend to share the opinion that the resources would…
Humankind is confronted with a "nuclear stewardship curse", facing the prospect of needing to manage nuclear products over long time scales in the face of the short-time scales of human polities. I propose a super Manhattan-type effort to…
Research on fairness, accountability, transparency and ethics of AI-based interventions in society has gained much-needed momentum in recent years. However it lacks an explicit alignment with a set of normative values and principles that…
We construct a new type of transfer from the Earth to Mars, which ends in ballistic capture. This results in a substantial savings in capture $\Delta v$ from that of a classical Hohmann transfer under certain conditions. This is…
There is growing interest in the possibility that the resource base of the Solar System might in future be used to supplement the economic resources of our own planet. As the Earth's closest celestial neighbour, the Moon is sure to feature…
The concept of a system-wide measure of the sustainment of life (habitability) for space-faring interplanetary species is introduced and explored. Although largely agnostic to the details of how interplanetary life might operate (e.g., via…
How can humans remain in control of artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems designed to perform tasks autonomously? Such systems are increasingly ubiquitous, creating benefits - but also undesirable situations where moral responsibility…
We give a popular account of the present state of the research in the field of extra-solar planetary systems, popularly termed as exoplanets, with a brief overview of the techniques employed. We also discuss the question of habitability and…
Studying potential global catastrophes is vital. The high stakes of existential risk studies (ERS) necessitate serious scrutiny and self-reflection. We argue that existing approaches to studying existential risk are not yet fit for purpose,…