Climate experts highlighted rising nuclear noncooperation and climate change as contributing to the likelihood of human-caused catastrophe at a Georgetown University event Jan. 27.
Three members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB), a group that advises the science nonprofit on global threats, warned that rising authoritarianism and nuclear proliferation have brought the Doomsday Clock, a measure of the likelihood for human-caused global catastrophe, closer to midnight. The event was hosted by Georgetown’s government department and the conflict resolution master’s program.
Daniel Holz, SASB chair and a physics professor at the University of Chicago, said a lack of progress in major global issues and the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) motivated the jump from 89 seconds until midnight to 85 seconds until midnight this year.
“We worry about a nuclear threat; we also worry about climate change, we worry about biological threats and then we worry about other things on the horizon — misinformation and disinformation, something we’re becoming increasingly familiar with AI,” Holz said at the event…