About Sapienship

The challenges

In the 21st century, humanity faces three major existential threats: technological disruption, ecological collapse, and global war. Each of these endangers the future of human civilization. The key to overcoming these perils is trust. Only with trust can humanity share knowledge, cooperate across borders, and develop lasting solutions. No country can wall itself off from climate change, from the vast changes AI brings, or from nuclear winter. Either we solve these challenges together - or we’ll all have to face the consequences apart.

• The AI Revolution

  Rapid advances in artificial intelligence and related fields are transforming everything from the global economy to our personal relationships. These breakthroughs could unlock unprecedented prosperity or, if left unchecked, unleash catastrophe. Unlike ordinary tools, which humans choose when and how to use, AI can make decisions by itself and invent new ideas by itself. AI may decide, for example, when and where to deploy a weapon, and AI may even be capable of inventing completely new weapons. Millions of AI agents will soon be new soldiers, new bankers, and new storytellers. They could run entire economic and cultural systems without a single human truly understanding how they function or how to change their course.
  This revolution is already underway. In the last few years AI has begun changing the world dramatically, yet it is still in its amoeba stage. Imagine how humanity will cope when AI reaches its T. rex stage. For organic evolution it took hundreds of millions of years to get from amoebas to T. rex. For digital evolution, it might take just a few decades.
  Surprisingly, this civilization-shaping force is currently being unleashed by just a handful of privately-owned technology companies, as if it were merely another online game or app. 

  AI is a transformative power with the capacity to redefine every aspect of humanity and of the evolution of life itself. That is why leaders and organizations must step up to ensure that humanity as a whole has a voice in this unprecedented revolution. As we strive to steer it responsibly, we must also prepare for the day when humans may no longer be the planet’s most intelligent entities.

• Ecological Collapse

  For the first time in history, a single species has gained the power to disrupt, or to save, the entire biosphere, depending on its decisions and policies.  

  We can and should conduct a scientific evidence-based debate about the exact scale of the ecological crisis, the speed of biodiversity loss, and the specific measures that should be taken. But one fact is beyond dispute: we all live on one flying rock, our planet Earth, the only place in the universe known to sustain any kind of life. If we mess up the biosphere, the consequences will reach not just every whale, chimpanzee and butterfly on Earth – they will reach each of us, as well. Nature knows no national borders. Understanding this reality should inspire us to work together on sustainable solutions for the future. By embracing this truth, we can join forces to design creative and compassionate solutions.

• Global War

  After one of the most peaceful eras in human history, marked by unprecedented cooperation, the global order that sustained this peace is collapsing, with no alternative in sight.
  When order disappears without replacement, what remains is chaos.
  Violence, which the global order had brought to one of the lowest levels in modern history, could return on a scale never before seen, fueled by new technologies of mass destruction.
  The warning signs are clear: worldwide military spending has more than doubled since 2000, and there are now more active conflicts than at any time since World War II.

  If humanity doesn’t reverse course, we will enter a new era of confrontation, this time with technologies capable of ending civilization itself.
  To prevent catastrophe, we must invest as much in building trust as in building weapons, and ensure that people find greater reward in cooperation than in combat.

Tackling the challenges

• Trust

  Trust is the foundation of cooperation. Without it, humanity cannot share knowledge, uphold rules, or act together to confront global challenges. The first and foremost task of leaders is to build trust, both within their own communities, and between communities. People who don’t wish or don’t know how to build trust, and instead base their political careers on spreading lies and hate, are not fit to be leaders. They are chaos agents. What’s true for politicians is true for each and every one of us. We all have a sphere of influence, whether in our workplace, our neighborhood, or our family. As chaos threatens to engulf the world, each of us can choose to be a candle in the dark.
  Each of us can decide to spread more truth than lies, and more trust than hate. The choice is ours.