My interests and activities are broad, but all revolve around the theme of making the world (universe(s)?) a better place. I am an interdisciplinary (or transdisciplinary) researcher working across a wide range of fields in natural and social science, engineering, philosophy, and policy. My primary focus is global catastrophic risk, meaning risk of events that could destroy global human civilization, such as climate change or nuclear war. I also work in astrobiology, which is the study of life in the universe. My research aims to inform major social decisions through careful attention to their impacts on the world and the universe(s), to fundamental ethics principles, and to the people and institutions involved in the decisions.
I am Co-Founder (with Tony Barrett) and Executive Director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. I am also a Research Affiliate of the University of Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. I live in New York City.
Contact:
Research inquiries: director [at] gcri.org
Media inquiries: press [at] gcri.org
General GCRI inquiries: info [at] gcri.org
Other inquiries: hello [at] sethbaum.com
Other Info: CV * photos * LinkedIn * Google Scholar
Updates:
1 May 2025:
GCRI is launching a new website at gcri.org. I have some new commentary articles on the new GCRI website: Democratic participation and global catastrophic risk, Parsing AI risk in early 2025, Advance world peace to address global catastrophic risk?, and The nuclear war scenarios that lurk ahead in Ukraine.
Click here for old updates
Some Recent Publications:
* Climate change, uncertainty, and global catastrophic risk, Futures (academic)
* Assessing the risk of takeover catastrophe from large language models, Risk Analysis (academic)
* On the intrinsic value of diversity, Inquiry (academic)
* Manipulating aggregate societal values to bias AI social choice ethics, AI and Ethics (academic)
* The origin and implications of the COVID-19 pandemic: An expert survey, GCRI Technical Report (academic)
Upcoming Conferences & Events:
None at this time.
Click here for old events
About this site: The formatting of this site was adapted from W3C's Starting with HTML + CSS page.
Created 15 Jun 2007 * Updated 1 May 2025