Humanity is at a turning point. For the first time in history, we have the technology to completely obliterate ourselves. But we’ve also created boundless possibilities for all life that could enable just about any brilliant future we can imagine. Humanity could erase itself with a nuclear war or a poorly designed AI, or we could colonize space and expand life throughout the universe: As a species, our future has never been more open-ended. The potential for disaster is often more visible than the potential for triumph, so as we prepare for 2019, we want to talk about existential hope, and why we should actually be more excited than ever about the future. In this podcast, Ariel talks to six experts--Anthony Aguirre, Max Tegmark, Gaia Dempsey, Allison Duettmann, Josh Clark, and Anders Sandberg--about their views on the present, the future, and the path between them. Anthony and Max are both physics professors and cofounders of FLI. Gaia is a tech enthusiast and entrepreneur, and with her newest venture, 7th Future, she’s focusing on bringing people and organizations together to imagine and figure out how to build a better future. Allison is a researcher and program coordinator at the Foresight Institute and creator of the website existentialhope.com. Josh is cohost on the Stuff You Should Know Podcast, and he recently released a 10-part series on existential risks called The End of the World with Josh Clark. Anders is a senior researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute with a background in computational neuroscience, and for the past 20 years, he’s studied the ethics of human enhancement, existential risks, emerging technology, and life in the far future. We hope you’ll come away feeling inspired and motivated--not just to prevent catastrophe, but to facilitate greatness. Topics discussed in this episode include: How technology aids us in realizing personal and societal goals. FLI’s successes in 2018 and our goals for 2019. Worldbuilding and how to conceptualize the future. The possibility of other life in the universe and its implications for the future of humanity. How we can improve as a species and strategies for doing so. The importance of a shared positive vision for the future, what that vision might look like, and how a shared vision can still represent a wide enough set of values and goals to cover the billions of people alive today and in the future. Existential hope and what it looks like now and far into the future.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.