Innovating Works

UnPrEDICT

Financiado
Uncertainty and Precaution Environmental Decisions Involving Catastrophic Threa...
The goal of this project is to supplement or replace the precautionary principle with decision guidance that better handles both normative and empirical uncertainty in contexts of speculative but potentially catastrophic consequen... The goal of this project is to supplement or replace the precautionary principle with decision guidance that better handles both normative and empirical uncertainty in contexts of speculative but potentially catastrophic consequences. It has been claimed that emerging technologies such as geoengineering, biotechnology, or machine intelligence could have catastrophic impacts on human civilization or the biosphere, indicating the need for precaution until scientific uncertainty has been resolved. Yet it is unclear how to apply the precautionary principle to cases where the deeper investigations of scientific uncertainties that it calls for can themselves be a source of catastrophic risk (in e.g. gain-of-function research and geoengineering experiments). Furthermore, the precautionary principle fails to account for moral uncertainty —even though many decisions depend more sensitively on ethical parameters (e.g. our obligations to future generations, discount rates, intrinsic value of nature) than on remaining scientific uncertainties. Building on recent advances in decision theory, computational modelling, and domain-specific risk assessment techniques, and using tools of analytic and moral philosophy, this project will: (1) develop methods that account for normative uncertainty by combining voting theory with ongoing work on moral uncertainty, identifying parameters that make the largest practical difference; (2) combine these with methods for dealing with sources of empirical ignorance (such as information hazards, anthropic shadow, model uncertainties) into a theoretically well-motivated framework that comprises normative and empirical uncertainty; (3) derive mid-level principles and procedures from this theoretical framework by working through three case studies (geoengineering, dual-use biotechnology, and automation and machine intelligence) offering better practical guidance on speculative but potentially catastrophic risks than does the precautionary principle. ver más
31/03/2021
2M€
Duración del proyecto: 68 meses Fecha Inicio: 2015-07-28
Fecha Fin: 2021-03-31

Línea de financiación: concedida

El organismo H2020 notifico la concesión del proyecto el día 2021-03-31
Línea de financiación objetivo El proyecto se financió a través de la siguiente ayuda:
ERC-ADG-2014: ERC Advanced Grant
Cerrada hace 10 años
Presupuesto El presupuesto total del proyecto asciende a 2M€
Líder del proyecto
THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UN... No se ha especificado una descripción o un objeto social para esta compañía.
Perfil tecnológico TRL 4-5