Technology

Evolution of the Polycrisis: Anthropocene Traps that Challenge Global Sustainability

In this article, the authors, inspired by the polycrisis, identify and explore potential 14 traps affecting humanity in the global human context, brought about by the trajectory of our increasing complexity and influence on the Earth system. These traps are then categorized as global, technological, or structural traps and then further assessed to produce statistical […]

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Evolution of the polycrisis: Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability

Using expert solicitation, the authors identify 14 “evolutionary traps” (global, technological, and structural) that risk locking humanity into unfavorable (maladaptive) trajectories that seriously restrict its ability to adapt to the Anthropocene. These traps develop over four phases: initiation, scaling, masking (of harmful interactions), and trapping. The fourth phase involves one of five trapping mechanisms: constraints,

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Navigating the polycrisis—governing for transformation: The 2024 agenda for the systems community

In this article, the authors argue that the polycrisis is the manifestation of challenges outlined by the earlier scholarship of the “global problematique,” a set of systemically related factors including political, social, and ecological challenges such as pollution, resource depletion, and population growth. The polycrisis is recognized as the outcome of profound governance crises that

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An Overview of Catastrophic AI Risks

This report provides an overview of the main sources of catastrophic AI risk, organized into four categories: malicious use, AI race, organizational risk, and rogue AIs. It presents illustrative scenarios that demonstrate how these risks could lead to catastrophic outcomes or even pose existential threats. The report emphasizes that while the emerging risks of AI

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Polycrisis? What Polycrisis?

Alistair Benn argues that the polycrisis, with its overwhelming notion of multiple inter-related crises, is an illusory product of social media technologies that overload users with “shock after shock” and create a false impression of connections between the world’s problems. The solution to the polycrisis is thus to reduce exposure to social media and better

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The Era of Global Risk: An Introduction to Existential Risk Studies

This edited volume argues that humanity has entered a fundamentally novel era of existential risk. These risks range from global-scale natural disasters (like volcanic super-eruptions) to anthropogenic environmental destabilization (like climate change and loss of biosphere integrity), and from calamities that spread rapidly around our highly networked planet (like viruses and cyber threats) to the

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Can Democracy Survive the Polycrisis?

George Soros argues that there are three main sources of the polycrisis (in order of importance): artificial intelligence, climate change, and Russia’s war on Ukraine. AI poses a “mortal threat” to open societies via disinformation, and it provides closed societies new instruments of surveillance and control; climate change threatens to make large areas uninhabitable; but

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Threats by Artificial Intelligence to Human Health and Human Existence

The authors explore how AI, while offering promising benefits in healthcare, also poses significant risks to human health and society. They examine three major threats from misused narrow AI: increased control and manipulation of individuals through surveillance and targeted information campaigns, the development and deployment of lethal autonomous weapons, and the displacement of human labor.

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World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023

Global Risks Report 2023

This 18th edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report is based on a risk perceptions survey of 1200 experts on the likelihood, severity, and interconnections between 37 global risks. It finds that the biggest risk in the next two years is the cost of living crisis, and the biggest risk in the next

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