Final Project Exhibits
climate change and what we can do about it
For my final project, I've decided to make a video on climate change. It pulls heavily from the work of David Wallace-Wells and is inspired by Carl Bergstrom's warnings about misinformation. It's only six minutes long, but...
Global Climate Change Impact Zones
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/157b9194ac87423d8d5d7526ba80cd2f The Earth has warmed about 1.36°C since the Industrial Revolution and current estimates predict that the Earth will warm another 1.5°C by 2050 (SOURCE). The 1.5°C (and sometimes even 2°C) figure is...
Were We Doomed? Will We Be Doomed?
By Olivia Gross, Lucy Horowitz, Isaiah Milbauer, and Gabe Moos The question “Are We Doomed?” has a historical lineage and a future trajectory that we aim to trace through the creation of three syllabi for “Are We Doomed” classes that respectively take place during the...
AI Chatbots: Can Social Control be Damaging?
OP-ED LINK: BPRO End of the World Chatbot Op-Ed For my final project, I decided to write an op-ed detailing some concerns about the integration of AI through chatbots. Since chatbots serve as a simulation of social interaction, I wanted to dive deep and discuss how...
Is UChicago doomed? Students Confronting the End of the World
WATCH MY DOCUMENTARY HERE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E3IpmgpGmGvY3TFH6D-d3QhOzEIwobEv/view?usp=sharing My documentary video, Is UChicago Doomed? Students Confronting the End of the World, puts average UChicago undergraduates under the spotlight. While...
Are We Doomed? UChicago Students’ Perspectives
For my Final Project, I created a video interviewing UChicago students on their perspectives on whether or not humanity is doomed. This video as a Panopto video is linked above and below and should also be embedded as a YouTube video below: ...
Short Story – Personal Experiences in a Dehumanized World
My short story aims to portray individual responses in an AI-controlled world and emphasize the destruction of what we now consider essential everyday experiences. One of the most common fears in AI takeover scenarios is that AI...
Nuclear War Risk Index: A Standardized Doomsday Clock
For the very first lecture, we discussed the Doomsday Clock. The clock acts as a warning of how close we are to destruction. We analyzed the 2024 announcement of the doomsday clock and how it mentioned that the risk of nuclear extinction has been increased as Russia...
The U.S.’s Response to Climate Change: An Investigation of the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program
The U.S.’s Response to Climate Change An Investigation of the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program. In the research paper linked above, I aim to provide a thorough examination of the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee Program (primarily its Title 17...
Race Against the Doomsday Clock
Race Against the Doomsday Clock By Charlie Gravitt, Lawton Bauer, and Miles Brown Download (Windows and Linux only): Windows version Linux Version If those don't work, try to access it via UChicago box at this link, and see the bottom of this post for how to play...
Threads of Discord: An Anthology
Our trio’s anthology of three stories sets out to explore the effects of misinformation on different societies and its intersection with at least one other existential threat. To reflect our goal, we titled our anthology Threads of Discord. In order of appearance both...
The JEDHi Wars: Armageddon and the President
The JEDHi Wars: Armageddon and the President Winter 2024 Aaron Wineberg and Henry Lin Objective The JEDHi Wars is not just a game of technological failings but an exhibition of the dangers created by A.I. and nuclear threats. Users who play The JEDHi...
Living After Midnight: Redefining the Doomsday Clock for the Age of Progressive Existential Threats
Group Members: Mikko Hallikainen & William Dolan In 1947, artist and designer Martyl Langsdorf was commissioned by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to create a cover image for the upcoming issue of their annual publication; something to communicate the urgency of...
Fermi’s Fate: A Game of Existential Gambits
Fermi’s Fate: A Game of Existential Gambits By Mia Simmons, Aidan Jones, Audrey Scott, and Daniela Chen We created a board game called “Fermi’s Fate: A Game of Existential Gambits” that contextualizes the existential risks covered in class, educating players and...
Report: A Compulsory Approach Against Pandemic
Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic is a major disaster faced by the world in the 2020s. According to data from the World Health Organization website, as of the evening of May 3, 2023, there have been a total of 760 million confirmed COVID-19 cases globally, with 6.92...
Digital Horizons and Nuclear Shadows: Charting a Path to Global Security
Click here to view David Traub's op-ed, titled "A Call to Action: Navigating the Nuclear Precipice in Today's Geopolitical Landscape." In the shadow of burgeoning digital advancements, the specter of nuclear threats looms ominously over the global landscape,...
Virus X Response Plan
A Response Plan to Virus X Anusha Gupta and Brianna Liu For our project, we imagined a severe, hypothetical virus called Virus X and created a response plan for it from the perspective of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Link to website:...
Class syllabus
The syllabus for the class: Are We Doomed_syllabus
Self-portraits for the End of the World
By Janet and Jane Tunde Kelleher Introduction & Motivation: Poll after poll, potential crisis after potential crisis, the class concurred that, on our current trajectory, humanity is doomed, and that societal transformation has the most promise to avert such...
Doomsday International Realty
Final Project: Property Portfolio For our final project we created an architectural portfolio. Each of the residences included in the portfolio was designed in response to one of the existential crises covered in class. The project engages with the following...
“Goodnight Moon,” but Adapted for Doom
READ THE BOOK HERE: Goodnight Moon- Adapted for Doom Often referred to as “the very first book to share with a child,” Margaret Wise Brown’s “Goodnight Moon” (1947) tells the story of a little bunny, who notices the many items in his room and then bids them each...
Meditations on Doom: A Collection of Poetry and Photography by Mariam Esber
Link to the full online literary magazine containing the poems and photos: https://indd.adobe.com/view/751b4600-9da6-4c59-b4a0-5084cbf3c533 For my final project, I chose to write eight poems that grapple with each of the existential threats we have explored during our...
Behind the “Apple Tree”: Blog-post of the Final Project
Blog of Yehong: Our story started with a simple idea: if an artificial intelligence went rogue and created cyber-enabled information chaos, how would humanity end? Hence, the prototype of the story was that two ambitious capitalists decided to develop an artificial...
Understanding the Policy Context Behind Climate Change
Link to the Paper! In this paper, I aimed to address the reasoning behind why policy implementation is such a complicated and lengthy process when dealing with climate change. Imagining a timescale for impending doom is difficult, and imagining a solution that holds...
Nuclear Energy: Science, Confusion, and Possibility (Blog)
Zeyang Pan, Alexander Lopez de Bertodano, and Sam Corey Read our paper here: https://voices.uchicago.edu/202102bpro25800/project/nuclear-energy-science-confusion-and-possibility/ We wrote a research paper about nuclear energy involving three parts: 1) How nuclear...
The Vision Behind “Genesis”: A Short Screenplay About Living in a Doomed World
By David Naples Warning: This write-up contains spoilers for Genesis, a screenplay by David Naples I’ve always appreciated how much a film could facilitate thoughts and ideas, and this course especially has given us great examples of movies that encourage...
What is “Societal Transformation”?: Offering Marxist Socialism as a Solution
BPRO_25800_Final_Paper_Soloview_Vasily Let me start off by saying I am not trying to convince you to become a communist. If I do, great! But more importantly, I am trying to simply bring up a conceptual framing and a vision of a future that I think has not been...
Threat Level Midnight
Threat Level Midnight: A Board Game On the End of the World Rule Book: Threat Level Midnight Rules Motivation Coming into this class I found it difficult to comprehend what the end of the world would look like. I was aware of...
Infodemic: Disinformation Campaign, Decentralized Propaganda and Reactive Authoritarianism
Infodemic: Disinformation Campaign, Decentralized Propaganda and Reactive Authoritarianism Ruanzhenghao “Shiruan” SHI My final project is a research proposal with my preliminary findings and analyses. I plan to probe into the disinformation campaign mobilized...
The Extinction Museum
DOWNLOAD Thanks for playing Extinction Museum! This is an interactive game where you explore a museum exhibit about the crises caused by humanity. We recommend that you play the game before The museum is located in the future, where a devastating nuclear missile...
AI and Personality
With our final project we wanted to tackle the question what is personality? And how our understanding of personality can be applied to AI. Using a video format we show how AI, specifically neural networks, behave in a similar way to the...
Doom on Film: Rated G
For my final assignment, I chose to do a podcast in which I discuss three children’s movies that grapple with some of the existential issues we’ve discussed in class: The Lorax, WALL-E, and The Hunger Games. I got this idea from looking at the list of recommended...
Defcon 1 Game
General Concept: For the final project in this course, we designed a board game that we believe is both fun and demonstrates the risk that nuclear war and misinformation pose to society. This game involves three to six players, who can play as any of six countries...
The Logs of Arkhipov the Spy
A Daily Log To access this project: click here. This project is a daily log from the perspective of a Russian industrial spy. I have named him Arkhipov, after the man who averted a Russian nuclear strike in 1962. As the log begins, Arkhipov is facing a difficult...
Media and the Salience of Existential Threats
Link to my Op-Ed. In week 4, I wrote my memo starting from the idea that I have a difficult time conceptualizing of the existential threat which AI poses, particularly compared to the threat of nuclear armageddon and of climate change, which I find incredibly salient....
parthogenesis (elijah smith final)
PARTHOGENESIS That links to my final. Thanks :)))
ClimateFAX
By Braedon Junker and Chris Krantz Link to website: https://chriskrantz.wixsite.com/climatefax It is often (and unfortunately) believed that individual decisions cannot help in changing the direction our climate is headed. This misperception has led to personal...
Warnings from the Future: Climate Change’s Inequitable Wrath
Chris Campo Link to Project In this course, every week’s lecture ends with a survey for the class. The survey, consistent with the course’s title, always consists of four questions: Are we doomed? Are we doomed from [insert weekly topic]? How long do we have left?...
Confronting CMEs in an Interview-Style Format
For our final project, we decided to assess the risk of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) through a series of interviews with an expert on solar phenomena. The first interview took place over zoom, and the second interview occurs in-person following a massive CME...
Epidemics & Empires: An Optimistic Game about the Human Species
An epidemic can be defined as a “Sudden, widespread occurrence of a particular undesirable phenomenon”. An empire as “an extensive group of states or countries under a single supreme authority”. Both of which go hand in hand with the human species, interlocking...
Cyber Developments and the Environment
Read our Op-Ed here! For our final project, our group was really interested in the intersection between the realm of digitization and its effects on the environment. Recently, our world has increasingly developed new technology that will radically change the way we...
Final Debate: Battle of the Threats
AWD Final Debate: Battle of the Threats Have you ever watched a presidential debate? In the months leading up to this past election (or in any cycles previous), did you feel overwhelmed, irritated, or downright angry after listening to 60 minutes of incoherent...
The 20% Podcast: Why We Might not Actually be Doomed
For this project, we wanted to take a new spin on the material we learned about in class. We have learned so much about the existential threats we face now, and we thought a new way to engage with the material was to spin the class material in a positive way. We...
Securing Humanity’s Future: Reorienting U.S. Policy to Address Existential Risks
Securing Humanity’s Future: Reorienting U.S. Policy to Address Existential Risks By Bryce Farabaugh Humanity in the 21st century is poised to face an unprecedented number of risks that previous generations did not have to face, and its ability to address these risks...
An Overview of India’s Current and Future Sources of Energy Generation
Names: Lance Johnson, Dillon Ramlochun, Ishaan Patel and Chase Denholm Project Format: Research Paper (Link to Paper included at end of Blog Post) An Overview of India's Current and Future Sources of Energy Generation (Blog Post) For our final project, our team...
The Doomsday Clock: A New START
A quote from Oppenheimer, an architect of the first atomic bomb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb13ynu3Iac "At precisely 5:29 A.M. on July 16, 1945, a bright flash sharply pierced the early New Mexico morning. As a mushroom cloud rose from the resulting crater,...
Judging Robots
This is a research project about whether and to what extent human judges can be replaced by artificial intelligence. I argue that there are applications of the technology that can better serve the purposes of the judiciary than the system we currently have, and that...
AI Artists: Training My Replacement
AI Artists: Training My Replacement Adriana Zavala Introduction and Motivation: For my project I wanted to tackle the threat of AI takeover from the point of view of a digital artist. In my original proposal, I was going to create a digital work of art that...
Doom in Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness
My final project is a video essay on the Japanese anime Psycho-Pass: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-rCfX8GAJN0r4nXgKsQFFe5s8eXrZH-f/view?usp=sharing For my final project, I knew that I wanted to analyze a future imaginary in conversation with the themes from our...
doomed stardust?
We all started as stardust. Our beginnings were mystical and full of hope. Now, what happens as we approach doom? These existential threats are all of a result of human actions. Are we smart enough to fix our own mistakes before it is too late? Or are we doomed...
“DAVIS” by Panun Bali and Blake Moss
Our screenplay is here! When deciding on a final project, we were immediately drawn to the idea of writing a screenplay (titled: DAVIS). Part of the project was to synthesize concepts from different weeks of the course, so our screenplay for a short film covers...
Grandpa’s Apple Tree–Science Fiction by Yehong Deng and Yuming Liu
Painting by Paul Ranson, Apple Tree with Red Fruit, Museum of Fine Arts, Huston. (1) Josh pushed Pedro and woke him up from an afternoon nap. He pointed his left index finger to the screen projector and showed Pedro the new mind map he just finished. Ten years ago,...
“Recipes for Disaster” by Fatou Dioum, Tim Granzow, Shane Kim, and Grace Wagner
Recipes for Disaster is the beginner’s survival guide to coping with the end of the world. We recognize that no matter how the world ends, humans will need to eat to survive. In this first volume, which addresses the culinary constraints placed upon humanity in the...
Earthworks: A Short Interactive Experience
Earthworks: A Short Interactive Experience We are but ants in the eyes of a greater intelligence. Throughout the length of this course, one particular issue became exceptionally obvious: it’s very, very hard to convince people, even extremely smart and well educated...
The Hack to Understanding the Colonial Pipeline Incident
For our project, we decided to focus on something highly relevant - the hacking of the Colonial Pipeline that took place just last month. We wrote an in-depth opinion piece that both investigates the causes and consequences of the hack, and presents a vision for how...
The Doomsday Podcast: How Will Civilization End?
How will civilization end? audio For our project we chose to record a podcast in which we debated which of the existential threats that we have discussed in class is most likely to lead to the end of the world. Jason Sheppard thinks it might be Nuclear Annihilation,...
For our final project, the three of us (Max Adelman, Scott Rothschild, and Vito Smolyak) decided to do a podcast on the causes, impacts, and solutions of anthropogenic climate change. We chose this topic due to our mutual interest in the material...
“Humanity Must Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time” by Madalyn Chapman
Click here to download Madalyn Chapman's op-ed, titled "Humanity Must Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time." MOTIVATION AND REASONING I knew from the start of class when the project was introduced to us that I wanted to do something that had to do with environmental...
The Pandemic Game
Motivation My motivation to create an interactive game on a blog was to offer a fun and educational way of describing the many disasters we are currently facing, and the potential for these threats to become existential to humanity. I believe it is important to...
Will We Flourish?: A Choose-Our-Shared-Future
I created a piece of hypertext fiction, tentatively titled Will We Flourish? A Choose-Our-Shared-Future. (click to read!) Hypertext fiction allows the reader to affect the narrative they are reading, similar to choose-your-own-adventure gamebooks but with little to no...
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