Brian Toon joins us to discuss the risk of nuclear winter. Learn more about Brian's work: https://lasp.colorado.edu/home/people/brian-toon/ Read Brian's publications: https://airbornescience.nasa.gov/person/Brian_Toon Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 01:02 Asteroid impacts 04:20 The discovery of nuclear winter 13:56 Comparing volcanoes and asteroids to nuclear weapons 19:42 How did life survive the asteroid impact 65 million years ago? 25:05 How humanity could go extinct 29:46 Nuclear weapons as a great filter 34:32 Nuclear winter and food production 40:58 The psychology of nuclear threat 43:56 Geoengineering to prevent nuclear winter 46:49 Will humanity avoid nuclear winter?
Li-Lian Ang from Blue Dot Impact discusses how to build a workforce to defend against AI-driven risks, including engineered pandemics, cyber attacks, job disempowerment, and concentrated power, using a defense-in-depth framework for uncertain AI progress.
Physician-scientist Emilia Javorsky argues that curing cancer is limited more by biology’s complexity, data quality, and incentives than by intelligence, and explores realistic uses of AI in drug development, trials, and reducing medical bureaucracy.
Emilia Javorsky explores how AI can realistically aid cancer research, where current hype exceeds evidence, and what changes researchers, policymakers, and funders must make to turn AI advances into real clinical impact.
