Related papers: How much time do we have before catastrophic discl…
Automated vehicles have received much attention recently, particularly the DARPA Urban Challenge vehicles, Google's self-driving cars, and various others from auto manufacturers. These vehicles have the potential to significantly reduce…
The history of astronomical discovery shows that many of the most detectable phenomena, especially detection firsts, are not typical members of their broader class, but rather rare, extreme cases with disproportionately large observational…
Intelligent systems are increasingly integral to our daily lives, yet rare safety-critical events present significant latent threats to their practical deployment. Addressing this challenge hinges on accurately predicting the probability of…
Cellular phones are now offering an ubiquitous means for scientists to observe life: how people act, move and respond to external influences. They can be utilized as measurement devices of individual persons and for groups of people of the…
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) makes certain assumptions which guide all current search programs. To illustrate some, this includes (1) that interstellar flight is not possible (2) that the motivations of interstellar…
We present a model where some proportion of extraterrestrial civilizations expand uniformly over time to reach a cosmological scale. We then ask what humanity could infer if a sky survey were to find zero, one, or more such civilizations.…
The risk of a catastrophic or existential disaster for our civilization is increasing this century. A significant motivation for a near-term space settlement is the opportunity to safeguard civilization in the event of a planetary-scale…
It is curious that AI increasingly outperforms human decision makers, yet much of the public distrusts AI to make decisions affecting their lives. In this paper we explore a novel theory that may explain one reason for this. We propose that…
Machine-generated proofs are poised to reach large-scale, human-unreadable artifacts. They foreshadow what we call the Fourth Mathematical Crisis. This crisis crystallizes around three fundamental tensions: trusting proofs that no human can…
It is often argued that effective human-centered explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) should resemble human reasoning. However, empirical investigations of how concepts from cognitive science can aid the design of XAI are lacking.…
The transmission rate of communication between radio telescopes on Earth and extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) is here calculated up to distances of 1000 light years. Both phase-shift-keying (PSK) and frequency-shift keying (FSK)…
Applications from finance to epidemiology and cyber-security require accurate forecasts of dynamic phenomena, which are often only partially observed. We demonstrate that a system's predictability degrades as a function of temporal…
In the largest survey of its kind, 2,778 researchers who had published in top-tier artificial intelligence (AI) venues gave predictions on the pace of AI progress and the nature and impacts of advanced AI systems The aggregate forecasts…
Understanding and predicting uncertain things are the central themes of scientific evolution. Human beings revolve around these fears of uncertainties concerning various aspects like a global pandemic, health, finances, to name but a few.…
Though a goal of HRI is the natural integration of social robots into everyday public spaces, real-world studies still occur mostly within controlled environments with predetermined participants. True public spaces present an environment…
This paper presents a comprehensive examination of interactive data visualization tools and their efficacy in the context of United States car accident data for the year 2023. We developed interactive heatmaps, histograms, and pie charts to…
I overview data on several radical societal changes started circa 2015: accelerated decline in fertility rate, backsliding of democracy, rise of populist politics and arrest in generational renewal of political leadership. I conjecture that…
Ambitious civilizations that expand for resources at an intergalactic scale could be observable from a cosmological distance, but how likely is one to be visible to us? The question comes down to estimating the appearance rate of such…
We make decisions by reacting to changes in the real world, in particular, the emergence and disappearance of impermanent entities such as events, restaurants, and services. Because we want to avoid missing out on opportunities or making…
As algorithmic risk assessment instruments (RAIs) are increasingly adopted to assist decision makers, their predictive performance and potential to promote inequity have come under scrutiny. However, while most studies examine these tools…