s this to be our last century? The question was at the heart of Martin Rees' last book of the same name. It was provoked by the potential 'dark side' of emerging technologies.
Ever since we invented the wheel people have queued up to tell us technology will be the end of us. What's new now is scale: the large-scale nature of innovation, communication and transportation, coupled with the micro-scale nature of technology and research, has created a new set of risks which rival the threat of the atom bomb.
Astronomer Royal Professor Martin Rees is a co-founder of the Centre for Study of Existential Risk: an interdisciplinary research centre focused on the study of human extinction-level risks.
In this DIF session, Martin Rees will engage in conversation with an online audience on his areas of expertise, namely the potential impact of robotics and artificial intelligence, practical uses for space and positive solutions to climate change.
Speaker
Professor Martin Rees
Professor Martin Rees
Astronomer Royal
Professor Martin Rees is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He has been Astronomer Royal since 1995 and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.
He began his research in physics over 40 years ago, and became one of the world’s leading authorities on the big-bang theory and on the related topics of black holes, quasars, pulsars, galaxy formation, and gamma-ray bursts. His early prediction that a black hole would be found at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy was borne out by subsequent observations.
He is the author or co-author of more than 500 research papers, mainly on astrophysics and cosmology, as well as eight books (six for general readership), and numerous magazine and newspaper articles on scientific and general subjects.
(photograph: "Reith Lecture 1 (3)" by Reith Lectures. Licensed under CC BY 2.0)