Recently the philosopher William MacAskill, with his book What We Owe The Future, has been popularizing the idea that the fate of humanity should be our top moral priority. His core proposition is that today's 8 billion humans are vastly outweighed in importance by the hundreds of billions of humans who could live in future generations if we can avoid wiping out humanity in the near term. MacAskill's argument is known by the slogan "longtermism," (often written as long-termism) and it has already been sharply criticized. For example, columnist Christine Emba has written in The Washington Post: "It's compelling at first blush, but as a value system, its practical implications are worrisome." In practice, she explains, it implies seeing "preventing existential threats to humanity as the most valuable philanthropic cause"--which means we should invest far more in addressing risks that threaten humanity's very long-term existence. As Emba says, this can seem impossible to disagree with.

ANJA KASPERSEN: Today I am joined by Joel Rosenthal and Stelios Vassilakis for an irreverently engaging conversation about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on democracy, what we can learn from the Athenian agora in preserving what it means to be human in the biodigital realm, and how ethics empower civil engagement. Stelios Vassilakis is co-directing programs and strategic initiatives at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which is one of the leading international philanthropic organizations. Stelios is also a classics and modern Greek studies scholar, specializing in the works of Homer. Joel Rosenthal is president of Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and a distinguished public intellectual of international relations and foreign policy. Before handing the floor over to Joel to guide us through this conversation, I am very curious about these concepts that are guiding the work of both of your institutions. For the Stavros Niarchos Foundation it is empowering humanity, and for Carnegie Council it is about empowering ethics, and obviously there is a strong link between the two. I think in today's world we live in a very distrustful world, a crowded and overheated public space--if we can even identify that space, which we have talked about is a difficult space to even find--and so what we are trying to do at the beginning to empower ethics is first of all just to identify the issues, and to identify these issues, put a name on them, label them, and show them to be issues of competing values and competing interests that would benefit from reflection, dialogue, and discussion, even that question of identification and clarification of these issues and to bring them to the fore in a way that will not necessarily lead to polarization but can lead to constructive dialogue. The second step is to provide thought leadership around these questions--there are people who have dedicated their lives to thinking about some of these issues and to studying these issues; they have great competence and some authority in speaking about these issues--and to identify those people and bring that thought leadership to bear on these questions. Critically, though, it is not just about thinking. It is also about experience. There are people who are actually working on these issues, they are working these problems. It is part of their personal and professional life, and I think that the experience that they have themselves is almost as valuable if not more valuable than those who spend their lives thinking about these issues and creating scholarship around them. So when we talk about thought leadership we're talking about both scholarship and lived experience, Carnegie Council being a place where we can bring that expertise, if you will, to bear on these questions. The third part that is also critical today is to create a community of engagement around these issues.

Anja Kaspersen is a senior fellow at Carnegie Council. She is the former director of the United Nations for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva and deputy secretary general of the Conference on Disarmament. Previously, she held the role as the head of strategic engagement and new technologies at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Prior to joining the ICRC she served as a senior director for geopolitics and international security and a member of the executive committee at the World Economic Forum. Kaspersen is a Norwegian diplomat, former businessperson and academic.

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