SJ Beard on Can You Build a Great Future by Just Being a Good Person?

To make the future go well, we might not need a perfect model for its end state, or an abstract philosophical theory to guide us. Can your own sense of “the right thing to do” actually help make the world better?

In this episode we talk with SJ Beard, researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and author of the book “Existential Hope”. Some of the topics we discuss:

• How to shift our focus from “preventing the end of the world” to actively building a future worth living.
• Why aiming for a “happy ever after” state of the world might be dangerous, and why improving the world one generation at a time is less likely to backfire.
• Relying on our own sense of “the right thing to do” as a practical guide to make the world better.
• Why decisions about AI and global risk need input from a broad mix of people and their real-world experiences, not just experts at the top.
• Why building AI with compassion and curiosity about human values may be safer than giving it a rigid list of rules to follow.

Full transcript and resources available at www.existentialhope.com/podcasts/sj-beard