The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards a technological singularity.
Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, including new methods to combat viruses (such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods), effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.
We believe that, in some situations, it might be feasible to relinquish technological capacity in the public interest (for example, we are against the U.S. government posting the recipe for the 1918 flu virus on the internet).
We have some of the best minds on the planet working on programs to enable our survival. The Lifeboat Foundation Advisory Boards are dedicated to helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies.
We invite you to join our cause!
[Based on Lifeboat website and edited somewhat for translation purposes]
Jack Halpern
CEO of The CJK Dictionary Institute (CJKI) in Japan
Member of Human Trajectories Board.
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The Lifeboat Foundation was formed to prevent existential events from happening, as once they occur, humanity may have no possibility to correct the error. Unfortunately governments, and humanity in general, always react AFTER a disaster has happened, and some disasters will leave no survivors so we must react BEFORE they occur. We must be proactive.
The Lifeboat Foundation is developing programs to prevent existential events ("shields") as well as programs to preserve civilization ("preservers") to survive such events.
"We cannot rely on trial-and-error approaches to deal with existential risks... We need to vastly increase our investment in developing specific defensive technologies... We are at the critical stage today for biotechnology, and we will reach the stage where we need to directly implement defensive technologies for nanotechnology during the late teen years of this century... A self-replicating pathogen, whether biological or nanotechnology based, could destroy our civilization in a matter of days or weeks."
Ray Kurzweil