Lifeboat Foundation

The Lifeboat Foundation is a non-profit organization with an explicit mandate of "helping humanity survive existential risks" and anticipate possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, especially in the event of a technological singularity. The Lifeboat Foundation advocates scientific and technological advancements which will help humanity, and life in general, survive both natural and artificial existential risks by identifying and implementing strategies to mitigate the overall threat that these increasingly powerful technologies pose and the threat that cataclysmic natural events pose. The Lifeboat Foundation advocates the development of genetic engineering, nanotechnology and AI and other technologies to defend humanity, including defending it from consequences of its own damage or manipulation of the natural environment. The foundation's primary goal is the continuation of intelligent human life and seeks to identify and mitigate the existential threats posed to that life and those specific symbiotic life forms (such as gut bacteria or edible plants) that human beings would need to survive in space. The first ARKs will likely be centered around this goal but will contain genetic repositories of other life forms from Earth which advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology will be able to revive. The Lifeboat Foundation finds all life valuable and as long as its primary goal is fulfilled advocates would create lifeboats of entire ecosystem. The more diverse and redundant populations of life are, both human and non-human, the less threat any particular existential risk poses.

The Lifeboat Foundation claims to be pursuing new methods to combat viruses (such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods), effective nanotechnological defensive strategies. However self-sustaining mobile biosphere space colonies "in case the other defensive strategies fail" are one of its ultimate long term goals. When a risk to the Earth's biosphere might be increased by a particular strategy necessary to establish a space colony, because these risks are not existential to either humanity or all life on Earth, the Lifeboat Foundation suggests pursuing the necessary technologies because ultimately all life on Earth will end when the next natural existential threat (asteroid impact, nearby supernovae, etc) manifests.

The Lifeboat Foundation was formed with the ethical premise that decreasing the likelihood of human extinction is the activity with the most positive utility on the planet today. In recent years, several prominent public figures have stepped forward strongly in favor of mitigating extinction risks. Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom writes, “For standard utilitarians, priority number one, two, three and four should consequently be to reduce existential risk. The utilitarian imperative “Maximize expected aggregate utility!” can be simplified to the maxim “Minimize existential risk!”. [Nick Bostrom, " [http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development] ", Preprint, "Utilitas" Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 308-314] . Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has publicly stated that "The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy the Earth" Physicist Sir Martin Rees warns "Science is advancing faster than ever, and on a broader front... But there is a dark side: new science can have unintended consequences; it empowers individuals to perpetrate acts of mega terror; even innocent errors could be catastrophic." He concludes "Even a few pioneering groups, living independently of Earth, would offer a safeguard against the worst possible disaster—the foreclosure of intelligent life's future through the extinction of all humankind."

Administration and Advisory Boards

Current officers include:
*President and Founder Eric Klien
*International Spokesperson is Philippe van Nedervelde
*Fundraising Director, North America is Michael Anissimov
*Director of Long-term Strategy is Michael Vassar
*International Director of Audiovisual Communications is Sergio M.L. Tarrero.

The Lifeboat Foundation is tax exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code.

The organization also has a very large Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), composed of 410 members as of October 2007. This includes philosophers, economists, biologists, nanotechnologists, AI researchers, educators, policy experts, engineers, lawyers, ethicists, futurists, neuroscientists, physicists, and space experts. The SAB includes Ray Kurzweil and Nobel Prize winners Clive Granger and Wole Soyinka. Most of these advisors are on the record as strongly favoring techno-centric or techno-optimist approaches to resolving human problems even if these have within living memory often resulted in technological escalation of conflict. Because ultimately life on Earth will end with the next large asteroid impact. Kurzweil in particular is very often criticized for advocating "uploading" minds and for granting artificial intelligences legal status equivalent to those humans enjoy, while not adopting any balancing position such as that of Peter Barnes that ecosystems should he protected as a commons with legal trustees of their own. The SAB does not publicly debate nor announce its positions or assumptions and is recruited without input from Lifeboat's opponents, unlike that of most nonprofits with controversial mandates that seek skeptical outsider input.

Lifeboat Foundation programs

The Lifeboat Foundation's Scientific Advisory Board is working on a number of programs to assess risks, negate them ("shields"), and survive catastrophic events ("preservers"):
* [http://lifeboat.com/ex/asteroid.shield AsteroidShield]
* [http://lifeboat.com/ex/bio.shield BioShield]
* [http://lifeboat.com/ex/nano.shield NanoShield]
* [http://lifeboat.com/ex/security.preserver Security Preserver]
* [http://lifeboat.com/ex/space.habitats Space Habitats]

These projects are "shields" and assume the development and spreading of knowledge of the exact technologies that the Foundation explicitly warns are dangerous, because ultimately technological advancement will continue. It is not feasible to assume the complete cessation of technological advancement is even possible, and the Lifeboat Foundation does not advocate this position either because ultimately large scale natural existential threats WILL eventually destroy all life on Earth. The Lifeboat Foundation is not a luddite organization and most of its members are technological optimists. However The Lifeboat Foundation does not automatically presume that all technology will never be misused. The Lifeboat Shield programs are attempts by prominent members in these areas of technology to explicitly identify and mitigate the threats that misuse of these technologies pose. The Lifeboat Foundation welcomes debate and discussion of the various existential threats and the best methods to mitigate those threats.

ee also

Related topics:
*Existential risk
*Molecular nanotechnology
*Utility fog
*Seed AI
*Space colonization
*Space and survival
*Biosecurity
*Survivalism
*Technological singularity
*Technological escalation
*Biocentrism

References

External links

* [http://lifeboat.com/ex/main Lifeboat Foundation]
* [http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios] by Nick Bostrom
* [http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development] by Nick Bostrom
* [http://answers.yahoo.com/question/;_ylt=AtjblpXOSMXPaKrJ2N9lui8jzKIX?qid=20060704195516AAnrdOD How can the human race survive the next hundred years?] - question on Yahoo Answers by Stephen Hawking
* [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html Why the future doesn't need us] by Bill Joy
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02E6D9163FF93BA25756C0A9659C8B63 It Was Fun While It Lasted] by Martin Rees
* [http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/stories/storyReader$1439 Biowar for Dummies] by Paul Boutin
* [http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?cat=21&paged=2 Accelerating Future] - regularly updated blog that discusses existential risks
* [http://www.oceania.org/] - the Atlantis Project. The earlier efforts of Eric Klien