Leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies have pledged to develop safety frameworks and prioritize risk mitigation at the AI Seoul Summit in South Korea.
Dr Matt Boyd & Prof Nick Wilson (Syndicated from the Adapt Research Blog) Efforts to prevent nuclear war should be greatly intensified – but we must also consider what happens if prevention fails. NZ is often cited as somewhere most likely to preserve a thriving society through a nuclear aftermath. However, our society is a complex adaptive system heavily dependent on trade. Major perturbations triggered by nuclear war could shift the state of NZ society from one of flourishing to one of mere survival. We detail these risks of societal failure and conclude with a set of first steps NZ could take to strengthen its societal systems. “I had a dream, which was not all a dream. / The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars / Did wander darkling in the eternal space” (Byron ‘Darkness’) Byron penned what could be a striking vision of nuclear winter 129 years before the atomic age. Holed up in a Swiss mansion during the ‘year without a summer’ following the eruption o
Dr Matt Boyd & Prof Nick Wilson (Syndicated from the Adapt Research Blog) In this blog we briefly review the literature on the probability of nuclear war and what various models estimate to be the potential global climate impacts (eg, of nuclear winter). Although New Zealand is relatively well placed as a major food producer – a range of mitigation strategies could increase the probability of sustaining food security during a recovery period. To get the ball rolling the Government needs to perform a national risk assessment on this topic and commission work on identifying the most cost-effective preparations. Putin’s Ukraine invasion and nuclear weapons Does Russian President Vladimir Putin intend to use nuclear weapons, under what circumstances, and what would be the impact of such aggression? This question is important because days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear forces to high alert. It is also important because