CCCR 2020 Anders Sandberg - Grand Futures: How Much is there to Hope For, How Much is at Stake?

Anders Sandberg is a Senior Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, Research Associate to The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and Fellow at Reuben College at the University of Oxford.

Grand Futures: How much is there to hope for, how much is at stake?
Humanity has existed in its behaviourally modern form for about 100,000 years, with recorded history stretching back about 5,500 years. If it survives, it has a potentially far vaster future. This talk will outline what we can know about the limits of what civilizations can do across the future of the universe - long term survival, material requirements, ability to spread, compute, and have valuable experience. While predicting what future beings may want to do is nearly impossible it is possible to analyse some of the bounds on
how great things could become, and their implications here and now. In particular, I will discuss the challenge posed by such grand futures by raising the stakes of our responsibility here in the very beginning of the history of our species and universe.

The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) is an interdisciplinary research centre within the University of Cambridge dedicated to the study and mitigation of risks that could lead to human extinction or civilisational collapse. For more information, please visit our website: