I’m both excited to see this launch—and skeptical of whether there’s any plausible model by which space governance becomes truly important before AGI arrives.
Hi Chris! I agree with you that there is a high probability that concrete space governance regulations before AGI might not be very important, especially in worst-case scenarios (although they might be very important due to their implications on society and impact on power dynamics before AGI), and only a portion of our research will focus on this. I do expect the values of leading space actors to become very important, and I expect some aspects of our space governance framework to remain after AGI—it seems beneficial to me to focus on developing scalable governance mechanisms to increase coordination between space actors post-AGI. Another possible goal of space governance measures could be to test possible governance mechanisms for AI governance—both space and AI are unprecedented in some sense and may require significant structural reforms to current institutions, and we may be able to get feedback on the effectiveness of some governance models (i.e. adaptive governance) through space governance prior to their application to AI governance.
However, we are particularly interested in exploring long-term space futures in post-AGI scenarios. This may involve looking at possible governance or coordination mechanisms in the long-term (i.e. interstellar), but it mostly involves exploring the range of possible technologies, norms, and values and what their implications may be in a post-AGI world. The term space governance may not concretely describe this research because the role of outer space is rather as a concrete domain in which we can visualize and explicitly describe possible future scenarios, hence the term ‘space futures’. For example, we can consider topics like digital minds, multi-polar scenarios, and the vulnerable world hypothesis in the space domain, and use the additional details that outer space provides to gain insights into the possible implications of the governance structures, norms, and technologies we develop.
I’m both excited to see this launch—and skeptical of whether there’s any plausible model by which space governance becomes truly important before AGI arrives.
Hi Chris! I agree with you that there is a high probability that concrete space governance regulations before AGI might not be very important, especially in worst-case scenarios (although they might be very important due to their implications on society and impact on power dynamics before AGI), and only a portion of our research will focus on this. I do expect the values of leading space actors to become very important, and I expect some aspects of our space governance framework to remain after AGI—it seems beneficial to me to focus on developing scalable governance mechanisms to increase coordination between space actors post-AGI. Another possible goal of space governance measures could be to test possible governance mechanisms for AI governance—both space and AI are unprecedented in some sense and may require significant structural reforms to current institutions, and we may be able to get feedback on the effectiveness of some governance models (i.e. adaptive governance) through space governance prior to their application to AI governance.
However, we are particularly interested in exploring long-term space futures in post-AGI scenarios. This may involve looking at possible governance or coordination mechanisms in the long-term (i.e. interstellar), but it mostly involves exploring the range of possible technologies, norms, and values and what their implications may be in a post-AGI world. The term space governance may not concretely describe this research because the role of outer space is rather as a concrete domain in which we can visualize and explicitly describe possible future scenarios, hence the term ‘space futures’. For example, we can consider topics like digital minds, multi-polar scenarios, and the vulnerable world hypothesis in the space domain, and use the additional details that outer space provides to gain insights into the possible implications of the governance structures, norms, and technologies we develop.