Editors Note: ( Ralph Turchiano) Just helping Cambridge out by posting some really cool positions they have opening soon. 
Postdoctoral research positions at CSER
We are delighted to announce that the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk has had success in grantwriting and fundraising, due to the generosity of several foundations and visionary philanthropists. As a result, CSER is now moving to its next stage of development: full research operations.
We are recruiting for postdoctoral researchers to work on the study of extreme risks arising from technological advances. We have several specific projects we are recruiting for: responsible innovation in transformative technologies; horizon-scanning and foresight; ethics and evaluation of extreme technological risks, and policy and governance challenges associated with emerging technologies.
However, we also have the flexibility to hire one or more postdoctoral researchers to work on additional projects relevant to CSER’s broad aims, which include impacts and safety in artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, biosecurity, extreme tail climate change, geoengineering, and catastrophic biodiversity loss. We welcome proposals from PhD-holding candidates from a range of fields. Please help us spread the word! Deadline: April 24th. http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/6554/
More details about our aims and research can be found on our website: http://cser.org.
April seminar: “Will we cause our own extinction?” by Dr Toby Ord (Oxford)
Event page: http://cser.org/event/extinction/
Will we cause our own extinction? Natural versus anthropogenic extinction risks
Abstract: How will humanity go extinct? Is it more likely to be from natural causes such as an asteroid impact or anthropogenic causes such as a nuclear war? Using the fossil record, we can place a rough upper bound on the probability of human extinction from natural causes: all natural causes put together have less than a 1% chance of causing human extinction each century, and probably less than 0.1%. In this talk, Dr Toby Ord advance an argument that anthropogenic causes currently produce ten or more times as much extinction risk as the natural causes, and shows how this suggests that we should prioritise the reduction of anthropogenic extinction risks over natural ones.
This should prove an excellent introduction to the risks that CSER focuses on and the importance of global prioritization to reduce existential risk.
Toby Ord is a Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University & Oxford Martin School. He works on theoretical and practical questions concerning population ethics, global priorities, existential risk and new technologies, and recently contributed a chapter on Managing Existential Risk from Emerging Tehnologies for the Chief Scientific Advisor’s annual report to the UK government.
Friday April 24th, 4.00 – 5.30pm, followed by a drinks reception.
Little Hall, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge, CB3 9DA
(please note the change of venue from earlier seminars)
Best wishes on behalf of the CSER team