A billionaire-backed movement is recruiting college students to fight killer AI, which some see as the next Manhattan Project.
Paul Edwards, a Stanford University fellow who spent decades studying nuclear war and climate change, considers himself “an apocalypse guy.” So Edwards jumped at the chance in 2018 to help develop a freshman class on preventing human extinction.
Working with epidemiologist Steve Luby, a professor of medicine and infectious disease, the pair focused on three familiar threats to the species — global pandemics, extreme climate change and nuclear winter — along with a fourth, newer menace: advanced artificial intelligence.
