ASTK18262U Thinking the Unthinkable: From Black Swans to Existential Risks

This course is an introduction to the emerging interdisciplinary field that explores catastrophic and existential risks; those events that have very large, in some cases planetary, consequences but of which we have very limited understanding regarding their likelihood or even regarding their existence. They range from a malicious or accidentally harmful use of nanotechnology to terror attacks involving nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, from risks associated with a superintelligent AI to catastrophic climate change. They include both “black swans”, a term popularized by N.N. Taleb, low probability – high impact events that nevertheless remains short of ending human civilization to existential/catastrophic risks that could spell the end of human civilization or even humankind.

Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, Future of Humanity Institute (Oxford), Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (Cambridge), and Future of Life, among others, pioneered the research and thinking about the unthinkable more systematically in the last decade.  Building on their work, through lectures, guest lectures, and in-class exercises we will explore these catastrophic and existential risks, how to study “the unknown unknowns”, how humanity can plan/prepare for them, and the ethical/normative dimensions of existential risks.

There will be an in-class workshop/simulation exercise that will be developed in cooperation with Global Catastrophic Risk Institute as a part of the course.