Civil Stewardship Democracy

How can democracy be reformed, before it is too late?

Artificial Intelligence, robotics, and brain-computer interfaces are accelerating too fast for conventional political evolution. With the imminent arrival of Superintelligence, the current default trajectory for politics and geopolitics is a descent into chaos. Humanity urgently needs to create a faster, globally trusted decision-making body. That requires a deep reform of democracy, happening much more quickly than the pace of present reform initiatives. The task is therefore not just to improve democracy but to create a fast, legitimate mechanism through which humanity can define its values, coordinate survival, and enter coexistence with benevolent Superintelligence.

That's the thesis which Tony Czarnecki, Managing Partner of Sustensis, will be exploring in this London Futurists webinar.

Tony's one-sentence summary of the way forward is for humanity to create a new type of democracy - Civil Stewardship Democracy - as an emergency bridge: democratic enough to be legitimate, filtered enough to be competent, and temporary enough to serve the transition from human self-government to safe coexistence with benevolent Superintelligence.

Questions the presentation will try to answer include:

• What if the United Nations cannot speak for humanity?
• What if individual powers align Superintelligence mainly with their own national interests?
• What if party democracies are too polarised and short-termist to select humanity’s trustees?
• What if the decisive act is not another election, but a Testament of Humanity?
• What if AI prepares most complex decisions faster than human governments can frame them?
• What if democracy has one final task: to give humanity a legitimate voice before the handover?

The webinar will also include time for audience questions, feedback, and extended conversation.

~~~~

This event will be hosted on Zoom. To register, click here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_InGe_LAnQQG-P-8VdImEMg

There will be no charge to attend the webinar.

The webinar will start broadcasting at 4pm UK time on Sat 30th May. To find this time in other timezones, you can use this conversion page.

Please log into Zoom up to 10 minutes ahead of the start time of the event, so you won't miss the start of the live broadcast.

As the discussion proceeds, attendees will be welcome to raise questions and vote to prioritise questions raised by others.

~~~~

About the speaker:

Tony Czarnecki is a futurist who spent most of his life working world-wide as a consultant for large global companies.

In 1996, he founded SUSTENSIS, a Management Consultancy focusing on Business Sustainability, which tried to answer the question: “How can companies survive for ever?”, obviously not literally. During that time, Sustensis included over 50 partners.

In 2018 Sustensis was converted into a Think Tank on Humanity’s transition to coexistence with Superintelligence, when Tony realised that perhaps it is time to ask: “How can human species be preserved for ever?” No wonder then, that Tony is a long-time member of the London Futurists.

Tony has lectured on postgraduate courses at Universities in Central Europe and the University of London. He has also been a mentor for postgraduate students at University College London and Regent’s University.

Tony is the author of many articles and six books on the subject of AI, Civilisational Transition, and Transhumanism:

Who could save Humanity from Superintelligence? covers one of the top existential threats – developing a malicious Superintelligence.

That book was followed by the Posthumans series, consisting of three books:

• The first of these books, Federate to Survive! proposes that the most urgent task for humans to survive beyond this century is for all nations to federate.
• Democracy for a Human Federation suggests that the federalization of the world should be simultaneously accompanied by a deep reform of democracy.
• Becoming a Butterfly is the final book in the series, focusing on the future of a human species after 2050. The author suggests that our future depends on a new system of values, which a superintelligent being may inherit from us.

Towards the Big Consensus…or the Loss of Control Over Our Future posits that the only way to rebuild the trust in politics is to set up a new Social Contract between the governing and the governed and build a Big Consensus fast.

Prevail or Fail – a Civilisational Shift to the World of Transhumans, is the most recent book. It argues that the magnitude of the changes required in our lives and global governance is so substantial that we must acknowledge it as a momentous Civilisational Shift in the history of our species.

In this webinar, Tony brings all his thinking up to date, recognising that risks of catastrophe are accelerating more quickly than he used to assume, invalidating any hopes that gradual democratic reform would be a sufficient solution.

~~~~

To register on Zoom for this event, click here.