"I do not wish to seem overdramatic, but I can only conclude from the information that is available to me as Secretary–General, that the Members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left in which to subordinate their ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership to curb the arms race, to improve the human environment, to defuse the population explosion, and to supply the required momentum to development efforts. If such a global partnership is not forged within the next decade, then I very much fear that the problems I have mentioned will have reached such staggering proportions that they will be beyond our capacity to control."
What Humanity Needs To Flourish In The Next Decade
We are headed toward a world of productivity without prosperity, execution without verification and capacity without constraint. But this outcome is not inevitable.
What Humanity Needs To Flourish In The Next Decade
We are headed toward a world of productivity without prosperity, execution without verification and capacity without constraint. But this outcome is not inevitable.
Exocapitalism: economies with absolutely no limits
There is a touch of destiny with this one. We have real…
Beyond GDP: Measuring and Valuing What Really Matters
Rethinking the UN’s “beyond GDP” agenda and the case for putting wealth at the centre
World citizens support large increases in Finance for Development
In June, Seville will host the UN Finance for Development conference. This conference offers a historical occasion to secure long overdue…
‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse
An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished
What it Takes to Standardize AI
Civil society advocates are heading to Geneva next month for the UN's inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance (6–7 July) and the ITU AI for Good consultation (8 July). IX's Mallory Knodel prepared notes for a planning meeting with GNI's Multistakeholder Approaches to Participation in AI Governanc
Halfway to 2030, world ‘nowhere near’ reaching Global Goals, UN warns
The world is “woefully off track” to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the 2030 deadline, top United Nations officials said on Monday, as ministers and policy makers gathered in New York to examine how countries can get back on track and make the transformative development agenda a reality.
The EU Inc. Proposal: how far does it really go?
A post by Gillis Waelkens and Stéphanie De Smet (Clifford Chance)
IDS Annual Lecture 2026 with Jason Hickel
IDS Annual Lecture 2026 with Jason Hickel
Existing Human Institutions — AGI Institutions Wiki
How existing human institutions handle coordination across scales — and how autonomous AI agents break them. Maps protocols, preferences, rights, incentives, expertise, norms, and thick commitments from dyadic to global.
Interdependent Thoughts – by Ton Zijlstra
Still, many questions have global aspects. Our information networks, our trade routes, our dependencies are truly global. Because of it many of our issues, including climate emergencies, are global in both their roots and consequences. We all suffer from small earth syndrome these days, as I phrased it in 2010 at the SHiFT Conference, where everything anyone of us does reverberates around the world because we are continuously bumping into real global limits, Club of Rome style.
Gradual disempowerment | 80,000 Hours
The proliferation of advanced AI systems may lead to the gradual disempowerment of humanity, even if efforts to prevent them from becoming power-seeking or scheming are successful. Humanity may be incentivised to hand over increasing amounts of control to AIs, giving them power over the economy, politics, culture, and more. Over time, humanity's interests may be sidelined and our control over the future undermined, potentially constituting an existential catastrophe. There's disagreement over how serious a problem this is and how it relates to [other concerns about AI alignment](https://80000hours.o
Europe 2031 — What getting AI wrong means for us
A five-year scenario about AI and Europe's impending slide into irrelevance, with a 2034 epilogue that describes how the collapse of the European model could have been prevented.
Towards the Symbiocene: Building an Eco-Civilisation with thought-leader, Jeremy Lent
Jeremy Lent is a long time friend of the podcast. His new book, 'Ecocivilization: Making a World That Works for All' is coming out at the end of April 2026 and so we got together to discuss what an Ecocivilisation is, why we so badly need to become one, and how we might get there.
