The task force that will stop superscienziati the end of the world - The Republic

Among the scholars also mobilized Hawking. From viruses lethal to the bomb, from asteroids to cyber attacks: these are the dangers
ENRICO FRANCESCHINI

WE are so accustomed to see it threatened by an apocalypse to the movies, be it climate disasters, giant asteroids or alien monsters, which almost does not seem a possible scenario. Instead, the real end of the world is a hypothesis, to the point that now they have decided to deal with some of the most eminent scientists of the planet to show us exactly how it could end human life on Earth, but also the way to try to avert .

Gathered in an association that sounds like the title of a science fiction novel, the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, astronomer Martin Rees, the philosopher Huw Price and other brilliant scholars and academics have compiled a list of dangers that could destroy the world, or at least its inhabitants, seeking to provide solutions to avoid them.

It begins with artificial intelligence, a technology so sophisticated to take control of the world and then decide to exterminate the human (something that already had imagined Stanley Kubrick in his film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but in a much larger scale) scenario is not more exaggerated since the algorithms decide million financial transactions per second.

Then there are cyber attacks, a wave of terrorist attacks digital able to overload absolutely everything, energy and communications, transportation and computers. So you mentioned the risk of infection of mass delivered through biological weapons, a plague in the laboratory to which a crazy nihilist, a bloodthirsty dictator or a civil war could kick off. And, as an alternative, the possibility of a pandemic, a virus that no vaccine can cure.

Other threats to humanity and an act of sabotage of the food chain; extreme weather conditions caused by climate change, and thus flooding , hurricanes, earthquakes, one or more asteroids hitting the earth and ending with the good, old thermonuclear war, or chemistry, or even conventional, if fought with the right intensity.

“We live in a increasingly interconnected world, more and more tecnologicizzato and more and more dependent on the web, “says Lord Rees, former president of the Royal Society and one of the promoters of the initiative. “To us Westerners may appear a safer world than it has ever been in the past, but instead is more vulnerable than it seems. And because political leaders have focused on short-term problems, it is necessary that someone suggests to international public opinion which the dangers are more realistic and by what means could fight. “

Scientists at the Cambridge group are not of Cassandre: remain optimistic,

nevertheless, convinced that the man has the resources to survive and deal with any threat. But at the same time warn that the most serious risks for our planet today do not come from the cosmos or nature, but are manufactured by man himself. “The end of the world is not a plot to cinema”, warns astronomer Rees. And the happy ending, unlike the cinema, it is not guaranteed: it depends by viewers. From all of us.

Tags

virus,

cyberattacks,

artificial intelligence