Related papers: How much time do we have before catastrophic discl…
For over 50 years, astronomers have searched the skies for evidence of electromagnetic signals from extraterrestrial civilizations that have reached or surpassed our level of technological development. Although often overlooked or given as…
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) does not yet exist, but given the pace of technological development in artificial intelligence, it is projected to reach human-level intelligence within roughly the next two decades. After that, many…
For about the last 60 years the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been monitoring the sky for evidence of remotely detectable technological life beyond Earth, with no positive results to date. While the lack of detection can be…
How long a technological civilization remains active, and what determines whether it collapses or persists, is a central question for both projecting humanity's future and assessing the prevalence of detectable intelligence in the galaxy.…
The most critical time for information to spread is in the aftermath of a serious emergency, crisis, or disaster. Individuals affected by such situations can now turn to an array of communication channels, from mobile phone calls and text…
Development of sustainable insurance for cyber risks, with associated benefits, inter alia requires reduction of ambiguity of the risk. Considering cyber risk, and data breaches in particular, as a man-made catastrophe clarifies the…
We use a statistical model to investigate the detectability (defined by the requirement that they are in causal contact with us) of communicating civilizations within a volume of the universe surrounding our location. If the civilizations…
In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), the highly incomplete sampling of the technosignature search space is often considered as a plausible explanation for the persistent lack of detections over six decades of searches. If…
Understanding why people trust or distrust one another, institutions, or information is a complex task that has led scholars from various fields of study to employ diverse epistemological and methodological approaches. Despite the…
We report the results of identical pre- and post-event surveys given to attendees of a talk, two-sided conversation, and Q&A centered around the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies at Harvard University in March 2026, covering perceived…
Artificial intelligence systems are now deployed at scale across sectors, accompanied by a growing number of real-world incidents ranging from misinformation and cybercrime to autonomous-system failures. Databases of AI incidents index…
Recent advances on human dynamics have focused on the normal patterns of human activities, with the quantitative understanding of human behavior under extreme events remaining a crucial missing chapter. This has a wide array of potential…
Due to their often unexpected nature, natural and man-made disasters are difficult to monitor and detect for journalists and disaster management response teams. Journalists are increasingly relying on signals from social media to detect…
We propose that catastrophic events are "outliers" with statistically different properties than the rest of the population and result from mechanisms involving amplifying critical cascades. Applications and the potential for prediction are…
There is, in some quarters, concern about high-level machine intelligence and superintelligent AI coming up in a few decades, bringing with it significant risks for humanity. In other quarters, these issues are ignored or considered science…
The fermi paradox uses an appeal to the mediocrity principle to make it seem counter-intuitive that humanity has not been contacted by extraterrestrial intelligence. A numerical, statistical analysis was conducted to determine whether this…
If public trust is lost in a new technology early in its life cycle it can take much more time for the benefits of that technology to be realised. Eventually tens-of-millions of people will collectively have the power to determine…
In this work, we uncover patterns of usage mobile phone applications and information spread in response to perturbations caused by unprecedented events. We focus on categorizing patterns of response in both space and time and tracking their…
Space weather is a collective term for different solar or space phenomena that can detrimentally affect technology. However, current understanding of space weather hazards is still relatively embryonic in comparison to terrestrial natural…
Catastrophes of all kinds can be roughly defined as short duration-large amplitude events following and followed by long periods of "ripening". Major earthquakes surely belong to the class of 'catastrophic' events. Because of the space-time…