Why Crisis Resilience Depends on Epistemic Security

If we want to prevent tomorrow’s crises from spiraling out of control, we must recognize epistemic systems as critical infrastructure, writes Elizabeth Seger.

John Vervaeke: “The Meaning Crisis: Wisdom, Purpose, and the Search for Coherence” - The Great Simplification

The crises that our world is facing seem to be constantly growing, leading to enormous and devastating systemic effects across the globe.

Polycrisis - Cascade Institute

The polycrisis program examines how today’s multiple crises are linked and how the polycrisis could create possibilities for positive outcomes.

AI Safety Is a Narrative Problem · Special Issue 5: Grappling With the Generative AI Revolution

This op-ed explores power and narrative dynamics around AI. Drawing on pop-culture references, the professional experiences of the author and examples from 2023’s “Great AI Safety Hype Roadshow,” this piece draws on the literary criticism technique of practical criticism to consider how speeches and announcements from both Silicon Valley executives and research scientists to interrogate the media-friendly nature of p(doom) discourse—which focuses on the existential risks of AI (PauseAI, 2023)—and its likely consequences. The complexities of AI and its numerous social impacts can be difficult for even the most expert analyst to unpack. In spite of this, the potential of “existential threats” has successfully cut through to become a mainstay of mainstream media coverage over the last year. This piece will make the case that this is an effective narrative conceit that has achieved a number of ends that traditional science communication tends to find difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Firstly, it is easy to understand. Simplification of this nature—that removes jargon and complexity and focuses on a single outcome—is much easier to fit on a TV rolling news ticker or on the cover of a tabloid newspaper than more well-balanced, representative opinions. Secondly, it inherits prior assumptions from well-known dramatic forms. P(doom) plays to stories familiar from Greek tragedy through to Marvel movies, in which lone male heroes battle ineluctable forces. Thirdly, it is imbued with urgency and so becomes difficult to ignore.

Sensemaking AI | Jigsaw

Sensemaking is a suite of AI-powered tools designed to help public leaders understand public opinion quickly. By combining AI interviewing with automated reporting, we bridge the gap between individual voices and actionable policy insights.

Critical Signals

Critical Signals explores practical and visionary responses to an era of collapses.

Bridges & scruples

For your own sanity, you have to remember that not all problems can be solved. Not all problems can be solved, but all problems can be illuminated. —Ursula Franklin

A world in turmoil: governing risk, establishing order in humanitarian crises

This special issue of Disasters on humanitarian governance focuses on risk and order. Its contributions show the tensions between humanitarian normative ideals and practical consequences, as many of ...

Dario Amodei — The Urgency of Interpretability

In the decade that I have been working on AI, I’ve watched it grow from a tiny academic field to arguably the most important economic and geopolitical issue in the world.  In all that time, perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned is this: the progress of the underlying technology is inexorable, driven by forces too powerful to stop, but the way in which it happens—the order in which things are built, the applications we choose, and the details of how it is rolled out to society—are eminently possible to change, and it’s possible to have great positive impact by doing so.  We can’t stop the bus, but we can steer it.  In the past I’ve written about the importance of deploying AI in a way that is positive for the world, and of ensuring that democracies build and wield the technology before autocracies do.  Over the last few months, I have become increasingly focused on an additional opportunity for steering the bus: the tantalizing possibility, opened up by some recent advances, that we could succeed at interpretability—that is, in understanding the inner workings of AI systems—before models reach an overwhelming level of power.

THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS

A Thought Exercise in Financial History, from the Future

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the easy fix

On the balance between perfect solutions and pragmatic fixes in software engineering

One year on: The momentum behind Jigsaw’s Sensemaking AI

How our suite of AI tools is helping public leaders bridge the gap between individual voices and concrete policy decisions

A quote from Daniel Stenberg

The challenge with AI in open source security has transitioned from an AI slop tsunami into more of a ... plain security report tsunami. Less slop but lots of reports. …