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July 2018 Update:
In this update, find out how we have been helping the progress of beneficial technology:
1. watch our latest (and amazing) salon video
2. learn about the promising advances of our fellows in nanotechnology
3. take action to co-create better futures
1. We steered a stimulating reflection on the future of humanity
Foresight strives to orient forward thinking in the right direction. This months, we had the pleasure to hold our favorite salon so far:
The Future of Civilization: Extinction, Race To The Bottom or Upward Climbing?
This was a debate hosted by Foresight Institute between:
Paul Christiano (OpenAI)
Peter Eckersley (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Robin D. Hanson (George Mason, Future of Humanity Institute)
Mark S. Miller (Foresight Institute, Agoric)
Christine Peterson (Foresight Institute)
Alyssa Vance (Apprente)
moderated by Allison Duettmann (Foresight Institute)
In the videos below, watch the panelists discuss the foundations of ethics, value drift, current vs. future beings, and how to influence the long-term future!
The Trajectory Of Civilization Part 1: Ethics, Now and Tomorrow
The Trajectory Of Civilization Part 2: Racing Where?
Our salons aim at helping our civilization endure through a healthy critique of our current paradigms.
The monthly salon series in 2018 focuses on strengthening civilization —an approach we first discuss as strategy for AI safety in our paper on Decentralized Approaches to Reducing Existential Risks. Since it is a mouthfull, we divided the topic up into manageable pieces.
Topics we discussed to date (all salon videos available in this YouTube playlist):
2. Keep an eye on these up-and-coming nanotech high flyers
One essential aspect of fulfilling Foresight’s historical mission to drive the development of nanotechnology is to support humans whose work is leading advances in the field. This month we would like to tell you about two of our fellows, Grigory Tikhomirov and Nusrat Jahan M. Sanghamitra, who outstandingly took on advancing beneficial nanotechnology.
Nusrat Jahan M. Sanghamitra, 2018 Foresight Fellow in Molecular Machines
Nusrat is an innovator, best described as a scientist, entrepreneur and motivator, committed to make a difference in people’s life by her scientific and personal endeavors. Nusrat started her research journey with a mission ‘to find a better anticancer drug with fewer side effects’. She is a chemist by training with a fascination for biology. She founded CyCa OncoSolutions to make an impact in oncology and to make significant contribution to the global fight against cancer. Her long term vision and dream is to establish a center as an one spot solution for cancer in her native place in Odisha, India and make high quality cancer therapy and care affordable by following a ‘patient-centric’ healthcare model.
To learn more about her work, check out the website of her company CyCa OncoSolutions, which has developed a new type of molecular biomachinery to deliver anything from fluorescent markers, to plasmids and anti-cancer drugs across the cell membrane. Or watch this interview of Nusrat.
Grigory Tikhomirov, 2018 Foresight Fellow in DNA Nanotechnology
Grigory is a senior postdoctoral scholar in Bioengineering at CalTech. Trained as a professional dancer and a basketball player, Greg has always been fascinated by the capabilities and hierarchical structure of the human body. Reading Feynman’s visionary lectures on nanotechnology during his undergraduate studies at Moscow University, Greg became captivated by the growing promise of nanoscience. Now, Greg combines his interest in biology and nanotechnology to build structures approaching the complexity of living organisms, starting from small completely synthetic building blocks. He is interested both in understanding the fundamental principles required to build such structures as well as developing materials for applications in medicine and technology using these principles.
Dive into Grigory’s work right here:
1. Fractal assembly of micrometre-scale DNA origami arrays with arbitrary patterns, Nature
2. Programmable disorder in random DNA tilings, Nature Nanotechnology
3. DNA-Based Programming of Quantum Dot Valency, Self-Assembly, and Luminescence, Nature Nanotechnology
3. Take action to create better futures
Last round of applications: Atomic Precision for Longevity workshop, Sept 8-9, Palo Alto.
Your support enables us to push for better futures on three frontiers:
1. Advocating for neglected risks arising from technologies
2. Selectively advancing beneficial technologies
3. Fostering ongoing debate on to decide which risks to advocate for and which beneficial technologies to advance
Because we value accountability, here you will find the list of our 2017 achievements at one glance – and how we could continue each project in 2018 with your support.
If you would like to keep up with Foresight Institute’s events and publications, follow us on on Twitter, on LinkedIn, befriend us on Facebook, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Thank you,
Foresight Institute
