Copyright

SJ Beard; Tom Hobson

Published On

2024-09-03

Page Range

pp. 1–12

Language

  • English

Print Length

12 pages

Introduction

Chapter of: An Anthology of Global Risk(pp. 1–12)
People have been thinking about The End of the World for a long time, creating popular narratives around disastrous events triggered by exogenous forces that responded to humanity’s failings. Today’s existential risk requires different ways of thinking, however, and the chapters of this book all contribute to both show how we can make significant advances in understanding and managing this risk, and how we can create new ways of thinking to fit the evidence around it. The four sections of this book focus on: 1) broadening the ways that we think about extreme global risk, 2) developing new the methodologies, tools, and approaches for studying it, 3) producing new insights about its causes and consequences, and 4) enabling mechanisms for reducing the level of extreme global risk by improved policy making.

Contributors

SJ Beard

(author)
Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2834-0993
https://sjbeard.weebly.com/

SJ Beard is a Senior Research Associate and Academic Programme Manager at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, an Associated Researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. SJ Beard works on the Evaluation of Extreme Technological Risks, and other ethical problems with ensuring a long term future for humanity. They also have a wide range of skills and experiences producing high quality research, training and analysis across education and public affairs.

Tom Hobson

(author)
Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1244-3787
https://www.cser.ac.uk/team/tom-hobson/

Tom Hobson’s work is focused on understanding and mapping the militarisation of emerging technologies, particularly biological technologies. His research, more broadly, is concerned with understanding how scientific and expert communities and military and policy actors imagine the future, the ways that existing technologies shape their visions of the future, and how they endeavour to secure a particular vision of the future through technology and innovation. Tom’s work aims to guide norms and policy in the present by developing a better understanding of how future (extreme) technological risk can be (re)produced through innovation and technology. Tom has a background in International Relations, Security Studies and STS, having completed his PhD within the Centre for War & Technology at the University of Bath. He has also worked in policy, research and project assessment in the fields of biosecurity and synthetic biology.