World's Greatest Engineering Society proposes a new direction in understanding and coping wth worst climate risks

I was very excited today to see this new draft book proposal, from the leader of the IEEE Press Series on Power and Energy. Based on new information, I now agree with Greta Thunberg's two key points: (1) that the very extinction of humanity is a serious risk; and (2) the need for true science based policies, UNLIKE those we now see in governments around the world who claim concern but do not have the kind of policies which could save us. IEEE is a major foundation of modern quality science and engineering, following scientific approaches with a peer review system and internstional dialogue second to none. The IEEE Power and Energy Society has noticed what Greta and I have been saying, and what science I have brought to bear. THat is why I was so excited to receve the followng draft proposal from the group I am glad to be part of now. Do note how the bios at end show that these are highly qualified people already, but are reaching out to enlarge the serious scientific dialogue as far as we can... ============================= ================= New Technology and Market Design for Energy and Climate Security Draft of an invited Book Proposal to IEEE Press Series on Power and Energy Systems Authors: Drs. Paul J. Werbos, G. Kumar Venayagamoorthy, Peter Ward, James Momoh, and Veronika Rabl Overview At a Hearing led by John Kerry of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, Senator Kerry urged that climate policy should not focus on expected or average climate outcomes, but on the PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE, on reducing the risk of the worst truly serious possibility before us. Many in the public have started to worry that the extinction of the human species itself due to climate risk might well be serious enough to justify serious efforts, well grounded in the very best science and engineering. Some of us did not believe in the extinction threat in 2009, when one of us attended Kerry’s Hearing and worked for a Republican Senator, but as we get deeper into the scientific issues we have learned that the risk is far greater than we once thought, and needs to be investigated further: https://tosavetheworld.ca/314-ocean-currents-and-our-future/. The purpose of this book is to try to connect the very best science and engineering now available, both to understand the risk and to support new RD&D and other policies aimed at developing new ways to reduce the risk as soon as possible, at minimum cost (or even benefit) to the world economy. We as experts in these fields agree that these risks could be prevented at costs far lower than what we now see in policy discussions which do not yet have the benefit of the kind of very best, front line peer-reviewed science available today, particularly through IEEE, the world’s leading professional society, well know for defending high standards for diversity in viewpoints, objectivity and dialogue, as well as strength in the many fields of research we lead. The book will not discuss market design in general; rather it will include specific market design technologies, grounded in mathematical principles, for each of the relevant sectors, most notably the systems unified by IEEE research to be discussed with emphasis on power and energy systems (Section 1). Outline The book will reflect the general strategy illustrated in the slide below, but will aim to upgrade and improve that strategy by building new dialogues as part of developing and disseminating the book.

Source: http://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm After the failure of omnibus climate legislation in the US in 2009, many serious experts said that we would have done much better with sectoral measures, focused and strategic efforts, focused on more concrete targets and drawing deep focused experts in the sectors. The book will support that approach, connecting IEEE leaders and other leading scientists to each of these five policy sectors. Because these policy issues are urgent, we will begin writing from the following draft five-part outline building on our many discussions so far, but will plan to invite others and expand the discussion as we can: • General introduction or preface (similar to the words above) • Section 2, by Momoh, with Werbos and Venayagamoorthy on “point 1” -- reducing net GHG from electricity production. • Section 3, by Rabl, on “point 2” -- reducing net GHG from transportation and from production of liquid or gaseous transportation fuels • Section 4, by Werbos, on “points 3 & 4” -- additional priorities in agriculture, in developing geoengineering options, in case of a need to move quickly to prevent the worst, and related sectors, where new efforts scattered about the world suggest that those sectors could actually sequester net CO2 in a way which converts them into an important asset, with only moderate economic incentives (circa $20-40/ton-of-CO2). • Section 5, by Ward and Werbos, on “point 5” of the slide -- new knowledge and R&D needs to assess the risk to human survival. A brief summary of the sections of the proposed book are given below: Section 2 -- Technologies from Generation to Market Design for Low-Cost Zero GHG (Momoh, Venayagamoorthy and Werbos) Net CO2 production from making electricity is the best and most important target for CO2 reduction. The IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) is the world’s leading international society for all aspects of producing electricity, and many related technologies. Prof. Momoh led a major new direction in crossdisciplinary research in electric power in an initiative he created, advancing PES technology in a way which integrates operations research, intelligent system and microeconomics platform: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2002/nsf02188/nsf02188.pdf. When market design is done right, and most effectively, as in the best US transmission systems, there is no real dividing line between market design and advanced system coding and hardware. The further advancement of that kind of crosscutting technology is essential to deeper, low-cost reductions in GHG, Actual data on the sources of CO2 tend to be confusing, in part because of problems of definition, in part because of data collection issues, and in part because political advocates want to draw attention to sources of greatest interest to them. A few years ago, however, the most complete data came from the US, where more than 80% of the net CO2 came from just two primary sources -- making electricity, and transportation. There was heavy CO2 emission from industry, but much of that came from making electricity in industry for use by industry, and from off road vehicles using engines like those used in cars and trucks. Recent OECD data seems to fit the same general kind of pattern: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Breakdown-of-CO2-emissions-by-sectors-in-OECD-countries-14_fig14_323533605 Focused, high efficiency efforts to reduce net CO2 from just two technical areas, then -- making electricity and transportation -- could solve our CO2 problems far more effectively than fuzzy broad-brush efforts which do not exploit our best technical and microeconomics knowledge of these two sectors. After the failure of the broad-brush, 1/2 to 2 trillion dollars per year climate bills due to Waxman's Committee, Pew Trust was one of the many activist groups who concluded that we would have done better with "sectoral bills," bills focused with maximum intelligence, detail and technical competence on these (and a very few other) sectors where special characteristics allow much greater efficiency than what is possible with broad brush bills. In 2011, after this experience in 2009, the White House issued a new policy for the Smart Grid which still offers a huge improvement in impact and efficiency beyond anything underway today: "...the White House priority regarding Smart Grid development is to support NSF research on a ‘4th generation intelligent grid’ that would use intelligent system-wide optimization to allow up to 80% of electricity to come from renewable sources and 80% of cars to be pluggable electric vehicles (PEV) without compromising reliability, and at minimum cost to the Nation (Werbos 2011, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine)." By 2019, experts in electric power systems (such as those we funded and reviewed from the IEEE PES) were aghast at the contrast between support for renewable electricity which would cost the consumer more than $1 per kilowatt hour (5 or 10 times the prevailing generation cost) after the need for backup and power quality were accounted for, versus new technologies already demonstrating they could cost less than oil and gas or fission, on a realistic foundation allowing for electricity production in regions of more reliable sun. By 2019, the breakthroughs in new solar technology changed the proven options to a huge degree. (See werbos.com/E/GridIOT.pdf, supported by the French electric utility system but widely reviewed in the US, in Chile and Brazil.) In 2009, representatives of Exelon (the largest fission utility in the US) stated to many of us in EPW that the real, total cost of safe fission electricity (not even counting the security costs reviewed at werbos.com/NATO_terrorism.pdf), were well over 10 cents per kwh, real cost -- even as new types of solar farm allow costs of reliable electricity well under that. Crucial to this have been proven breakthroughs in the user of power tower solar farms, using new forms of Brayton conversion of heat to electricity pioneered in the US but now used more in the Middle East and space programs, and low-cost storage of heat energy (pioneered in the US NREL but advanced substantially in Chile) which allows renewable electricity to track electricity demand even better than the best baseload sources today. The most important barrier to zero- CO2 electricity production today are the regulatory biases which make it easier to build long-distance pipelines than to build long distance power lines, and which favor in-state electricity production over long-distance transport. Next most important is the repatriation of solar thermal technologies back to major OECD nations, to Microsoft and to China, and the greater use of advanced power flow technologies (as in Werbos 2011) which allow more efficiency, reliability and lower cost. New breakthroughs in Quantum Information Science and Technology also provide a clear pathway to greater intelligence in the distribution and power electronics networks, crucial to costs and reliability in an all-renewable global electricity system. About one-tenth of global electricity demand comes in regions more than 1,000 miles away from low-cost solar thermal power sources. For the benefit of those regions, and for the sake of diversity and security, the world should also support the R&D essential to assessing and developing the full potential of electricity from space, as outlined in the book “The Case for Space Solar Power by Mankind”, which requires dramatic but feasible new R&D to reduce the cost of access to space down to $1000/kG-GEO, using technology like that proposed by Chase of ANSER in peer reviewed R&D funded by NSF in the past (under the JIETSSP program and follow-ons at Wright-Patterson). Abdul Kalam of India strongly recommended expansion and use of this kind of technology for geoengineering. Section 2: Increasing Energy Security and Reducing GHGs from Transportation (Veronika Rabl) Most of the impetus for the current move to electrify transportation is driven by energy and environmental benefits. While these benefits are significant, there is another aspect that should be taken into consideration – energy security. Although the specifics in this discussion tend to refer to U.S. conditions, the trends and issues encountered apply to much of the rest of the world. Transportation is almost entirely dependent on oil and consumes most of the petroleum used in the United States. Dependence of a critical economic sector on a single fuel represents a serious threat to national security. Ninety percent of the energy used in transportation during 2019 came from oil, an energy source subject to potential disruptions and market dislocations due to events beyond the control of the U.S. During the same period the transportation sector consumed more than 70 percent of all petroleum used in the United States. Our ability to reduce petroleum use will be essential to mitigating the energy security risks inherent in the dependence on a single energy source for transportation. An efficient way to curtail dependence on petroleum is to pursue electrification of passenger and commercial vehicles, and mass transit, such as buses and rail. Continuing to develop and implement alternative fuel options is also necessary to satisfy the continuing requirement for liquid fuels. Cleaner transportation is also critical to addressing environmental issues. Most of the CO2 emissions are generated from burning of fossil fuels. Electricity generation and transportation are the largest sources of these emissions; transportation is the largest source of CO2 emissions in the U.S. The 2nd largest U.S. source are emissions from electricity generation. As discussed in Section 1, emissions due to generating electricity can be addressed by substituting renewable generation, such as wind and solar, for fossil fuels. In fact, this transition is already taking place. In 2020, wind and solar generation accounted for over 10% of kilowatt-hours (kWh) consumed in the U.S. With this generation mix, CO2 emissions can be reduced by converting transportation from fossil fuels to electricity. Fuel combustion from transportation contributes about 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, exceeding those due to power generation. Because transportation emissions are widely dispersed, it would be impractical and uneconomical to capture and store transportation emissions once they are emitted. Only fundamental changes in transportation efficiency can alter this situation -- electrification represents such a fundamental change. Electric motors are inherently more efficient than internal combustion engines and can be used in mass transit, passenger and commercial vehicles, buses and rail. For example, electric vehicles convert about 69-73 percent of the grid’s electrical energy to power at the wheels compared to conventional gasoline-powered vehicles, which convert only about 16–25 percent of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels. Conservatively, in the U.S. this implies that already with current generation mix the CO2 emissions of gasoline cars are three-times those of all-electrics. Similar analyses of well-to-wheels results for medium and heavy-duty trucks show that all electric -- Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) -- significantly improve environmental sustainability by providing deep reductions in GHGs, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and carbon monoxide emissions, compared to conventional diesel counterparts. Increasing shares of renewable and natural gas technologies in future national and regional electricity generation are expected to further reduce particulate matters and sulfur oxide emissions for further improvement of the environmental performance of BEVs. A radical transformation of the transportation sector will also reduce emissions, particularly in large cities. Gasoline combustion is responsible for most precursors of urban smog. A taste of what clean air feels like was offered by the 2020 pandemic. NASA satellite measurements revealed a 30% reductions in air pollution over the major metropolitan areas of the Northeast United States. Similar reductions have been observed in other regions of the world. Even with current generation mix, electrifying the transportation sector has the potential to increase transportation energy efficiency and reduce both greenhouse gas and criteria pollutants. Such factors consider on-road performance, battery manufacture and battery disposal, recycle and reuse. On average, this holds true worldwide. However, the impacts in any one economy or region are entirely dependent on the generation sources for electricity used to power the transportation conveyance. The transportation electrification strategy has challenges to overcome before reaching a broad-based electrified transportation system. The most prominent among these are range limitations, combined with longer refueling times. A focus on the following areas will help to meet these challenges: • Development of market channels and incentives for Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) • Improved battery technology • Development and deployment of battery charging infrastructure • Integrating PEVs into the electric grid (incl. DER) operations • Reduced weight, volume and cost of power electronics and electric machines for PEVs Continuing advances in batteries and ultra-fast charging are some of the technology options that are being pursued to reduce “range anxiety.” Section 3. Agriculture & Related & Geoengineering (Werbos) In 2009, the USDA held many briefings on how they could contribute to GHG reduction. Senator Specter was a strong supporter of that, but it did not get the attention it deserved. Only later, as we built connections to Brazil, especially, and probed that literature, did we learn how huge the unmet opportunities are for the entire earth -- but also how much is available to us only in Portuguese, at a time when covid and politics have complicated the communications. We plan to continue to discuss these opportunities, as in some of our discussion: That leaves agriculture and related, the submission to the COP26 event, and the issue of whether to consider a sixth section on AI/quantum for climate which I would have to handle myself. Today, there are signs that we might be able to get co-leaders from Brazil who could do true justice to that very tricky area. A combination of the terra preta techniques for soil management, combined with sustainable but profitable livestock management, could turn this sector from being "20% of the problem" to OFFSETTING 20% of the problem. (Not to mention some understanding of the Amazon!) But we will see. I am open to new possibilities if you suggest them. Likewise, geoengineering has been widely underestimated in environmental policy, in part because some offer it as an alternative to the other actions. We will push hard on the theme of wide ranging, innovative new RD&D, intended to do full assessment and advancement of a wide variety of options. In addition to the usual space mirrors and reflective particles, there are new options especially suitable for new R&D, like https://spectrum.ieee.org/climate-change and proposals for chemical engineering at high altitudes to create “band aids” for stratospheric ozone (lack of which was a crucial factor in the speed of past mass extinctions). Section 5 -- Assessing the Risk of human extinction by climate change (Werbos, to be updated by lead author Ward) What IS the nature of this risk? Why should we even believe that the risk is real? What target variables need to be the real focus of policy? Without clear, quantitative focus, climate policy can easily degenerate into a kind of Christmas Tree handout to well-placed stakeholders, or to other deserving causes. Climate change causes many kinds of serious but lesser risks, but the world also needs books like this and new institutions with a very sharp focus -- not as an alternative to other worthy forms of climate action, but as a strategic challenge in itself calling out for very clear focus. This section, section 5 of the book, defines the overall focus, the key target variable: prevention of the risk of mass extinction of the human species. In 2009, when Werbos was the National Science Foundation (NSF) research Program Director assigned to work with the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee to develop and evaluate climate legislation, He simply did not believe that the risks from climate change were so bad. Werbos worked well with the friendly group of Senate staffers under the leadership of Senator Inhofe (the true leader of climate skepticism in the US), under Republican Senator Specter, an honest but tough senator more involved in national security than in climate at the time. In his office, with access to all the information available to both political parties, we agreed with the IPCC report at the time. That report said that climate change is real, that moderate rational market actions are called for, but that business as usual would probably reduce world GNP by only 5% by 2100, not nearly so important as other issues Werbos worked on, such as the security of US transportation fuel in the face of new issues in the Middle East (Werbos.com/oil.htm). We had very good relations with the Marshall Institute. Werbos will never forget their witness at an EPW hearing who said: "You are all so afraid of CO2 reaching 800 or 1000 ppm. Don't you realize that for most of the history of life on earth it was 2000ppm or more, and life just went on as usual?" But later in that year, the Director of Geosciences for NSF invited us back to a big public lecture led by Prof. Peter Ward. He introduced Peter as the number one frontline expert on earth on the real science of what has caused mass extinctions in the past on this planet. No, life did NOT always go on as usual. And yes, we need to work very hard to truly understand the lessons of history, in order to avoid the risk of repeating them? What exactly DID cause the five to 15 gigantic past mass extinctions of life on earth? There are two main goals of this section of this book: (1) to give us the best range of information now available to science on what the risks are we should be worrying about, and even how to measure them, so as to support and guide the work in the other sections; and (2) to stimulate the true old NSF-style debate and dialogue, to guide us to the questions and research efforts we need to narrow down the remaining uncertainties. I also hope that the great geohistorian, Robert Hazen, who has told us so much about the role of volcanoes and carbon, can join in the intellectual integration and synthesis in this chapter. (I see no contradiction here with his work, but ne must read closely.) Peter Ward's talk was a life-changing experience for me, because of the final few minutes when he compared the data curves for past mass extinction events versus the curves we are on now. "By eyeball," he said,"It looks to me that at 1000ppm, it's PT (the greatest extinction ever) all over again." What worried me the most was not his conclusion, but the responses of others in that room. Most just agreed or disagreed, and changed nothing in their lives. I began ten years of intense checking what to believe, starting with his great paperback book Under A Green Sky, for which I did a three-page summary: http://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm. The risk is that a type of microbe called sulfanogenic archaea will proliferate in deep oxygen-deprived water, near the Humboldt and Gulf Stream currents, resulting in outgassing of H2S to the atmosphere, causing a rerun of many very pleasant outcomes which the earth has experienced before. Peter's book “Under A Green Sky” stressed that we needed more cross-disciplinary research, bringing in experts in partial differential equations (PDE, like the Navier Stokes equations which govern thermohaline currents, like those responsible for most of the great extinctions of the past). One of the core programs I ran at NSF focused on advanced PDE, and that guided me in some of the further reading I cite on my climate web page. It led to the talk I gave on these problems, led by the Global Leadership forum of the Millennium Project, broadcast on Korean national television: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPccNVHRFIM More recently, however, Peter himself has done deeper research into those past extinctions of life on earth. His newer book https://www.amazon.com/New-History-Life-Discoveries-Evolution-ebook/dp/B00OZM4AN2/ is the most comprehensive review in depth of what science now knows about the history of life on earth. Chapter 12 reports on startling but solid new findings by Professor Lee Kump on the direct causes of the PT extinction, the greatest extinction of all. It was a great shock to me to learn that two causal variables best predict what followed: (1) "stratified ocean," which is already starting now in the Arctic and Antarctic; (2) phosphates -- in indicator of a kind of fertilizer in the ocean, which has already spread in recent years but needs to be much better narrowed down with new research. Volcanoes also played a crucial role in the sequences of past events. I am very grateful to Peter Ward and to Metta Spencer for hosting two recent discussions of how these variables play out, and the questions they raise for the Arctic and for the Antarctic, over the next two to four decades especially: https://tosavetheworld.ca/314-ocean-currents-and-our-future/ https://tosavetheworld.ca/290-extinction/ Better understanding of oxygen-bearing ocean currents and chemical fertilizer flows in the ocean will be directly important to designing and evaluating our options for geoengineering (section five), and to the cycles of energy and life which currently power the great "chimneys of water" which bring oxygen to the deep Pacific, Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. Some of the risks to human existence come more directly from how we use energy, as well be discussed in those later sections. Brief Author Biographies (Partial list for now) Dr. Paul J. Werbos (www.werbos.com) is a Fellow of the IEEE and one of the first recipients of the IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award, in recognition of the original development of backpropagation and of adaptive dynamic programming (now abbreviated as RLADP) in the 1960’s and 1970s. In 2021, he received the 2022 Frank Rosenblatt Award, then highest technical field award of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. Backpropagation and RLADP are the foundations which made deep learning possible, including reinforcement learning systems more powerful than those used in Alpha-Go. INNS granted him its highest award, the Hebb award, recognizing his work showing how these mathematical tools can explain key aspects of learning in biological brains. He received Ph.D. from Harvard University (1974), Masters’ from the London School of Economics (1968) and Harvard (1969). In high school, he took undergraduate and graduate courses in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton, and obtained FCC First Class Commercial Radiotelephone license. He has also published on issues of consciousness, the foundations of physics, and human potential. He serves on the Planning Committee of the Millennium Project, the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Lifeboat Foundation and the Chile Solar Energy Research Consortium. He has been active in IEEE-USA; for example, for IEEE-USA he gave a major talk in Rayburn to over 200 Congressional staffers, which helped prepare the State of the Union message which led to the Energy Information and Security Act of 2007. In 2009, he served as a Brookings Fellow in the office of Senator Specter, responsible for climate, energy and space policy. In the last years before his retirement from NSF in 2015, he led research in three core areas -- electric power grids, adaptive and intelligent systems (AIS) and quantum and high performance modeling for systems and devices (QMHP). Dr. Ganesh Kumar Venayagamoorthy (S’91-M’97-SM’02-F’21) is the Duke Energy Distinguished Professor of Power Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clemson University in January 2012. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), Rolla, USA where he was from 2002 to 2011, and a Senior Lecturer in Department of Electronic Engineering, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, where he was from 1996 to 2002. Dr. Venayagamoorthy is the Founder (2004) and Director of the Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems Laboratory. Dr. Venayagamoorthy received his PhD and MScEng degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, in April 2002 and April 1999, respectively. He received his BEng degree with a First-Class Honors in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Nigeria in March 1994. He holds an MBA degree in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from Clemson University, SC (August 2016). Dr. Venayagamoorthy’s interests are in the research, development and innovation of power systems, smart grid and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. He is a 2004 US NSF CAREER Awardee, a 2007 US Office of the Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) Awardee, and a 2008 NSF Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) Awardee. He led the Brain2Grid project funded by US National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Venayagamoorthy is an inventor of technologies for scalable computational intelligence for complex systems and dynamic stochastic optimal power flow. He has published over 550 refereed technical articles which are cited over 20,000 times with a h-index of 66 and i10-index of > 280. Dr. Venayagamoorthy has given over 500 invited technical presentations including keynotes and plenaries in over 40 countries to date. Dr. Venayagamoorthy is involved in the leadership and organization of conferences including the Clemson University Power System Conference and Pioneer and Chair/co-Chair of the IEEE Symposium of Computational Intelligence Applications in Smart Grid (CIASG) since 2011. He is currently the Chair of the IEEE PES Working Group on Intelligent Control Systems, and the Founder and Chair of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Task Force on Smart Grid. He has served/serves as Editor/Associate Editor/Guest Editor of several IEEE Transactions and Elsevier Journals. He is the Editor for the IEEE Press Series on Power and Energy Systems. Dr. Venayagamoorthy has received several awards for faculty, research and teaching excellence from universities, professional societies, and organizations. According to a recent Stanford study, Dr. Venayagamoorthy is among the Top 25,000 scientists worldwide across all fields and in the top 0.1% worldwide in the fields of energy and AI. Dr. Venayagamoorthy is a Fellow of the IET (UK) and the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE), and a Senior Member of the INNS. Prof. Peter Ward (Bio to be inserted) Prof. James Momoh. FNSE, FIEEE, FAEng, FAS and Member ofNational Academy of Engineering (NAE). Dr. James A. Momoh received his BSEE top of his class (Howard), MS EE (Carnegie Mellon University), MS System Engineering (U of Pennsylvania), and PhD Electrical Engineering (Howard) and MA, Theology (School of Divinity) at Howard. He authored and co-authored over 300 published journal articles of nine modern power and voltage stability, Optimal Power flow(OPF), generalized fault studies and transient stability called sampling (Theta), smart grid and micro grids The work also led to award of 4 patents to his credit. He served as Chair and CEO of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission from 2018 through 2020 where was responsible for providing oversight of the overall Nigeria Electricity Industry. Dr. Momoh served as chairman of EE department at Howard for 11 years (1989 -2001). He also served as director of the Center for Energy System and Control (CESaC) from 1984 until 2001. His research interest includes Optimization Theory Applications, Smart and.Micro Grid. Design and Implementation, and application of AI to Market design and power system Operation and Planning. Dr. Momoh served as Program Director at NSF from 2001 to 2004, where he was responsible for energy and power and computational intelligence. He designed and built a new interdisciplinary initiative called Electric Power Networks Efficiency and Security (EPNES). He previously received the highly coveted National Science Foundation (NSF) – US White House Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) and several other awards and Fellows. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE), FAEng, and FAS FNSE. He is recently awarded the 2021 Distinguished Tau Beta Pi (National Honor Society). He was elected into membership National Academic of Engineering, for his distinguished contributions to engineering; for the development of electric grid and for optimization techniques and implementation of advanced technology and policy for emerging electric grids in Africa. Dr. Veronika A. Rabl Veronika Rabl is a consultant in the Washington, DC, area, specializing in energy technology and policy. She has advised electric energy companies and governments around the world and has been an invited speaker at many events in the U.S. and abroad. She is an author, coauthor, and editor of numerous publications. Veronika’s work spans energy efficiency, demand response, electric transportation, clean power supply, and electric grid modernization, as well as energy and environmental life cycle assessments. Most recently she has been a team lead and coauthor of the IEEE PES (Power and Energy Society) Energy Storage Primer. She helped launch the Engineering Founder Societies’ Technology for Carbon Management Grand Challenge Initiative; assessed EPA Clean Power Plan implementation options; reviewed ISO/RTO market rules and processes; served as co-chair of IEEE Joint Task Force on the DOE Quadrennial Energy Review (QER); and cochaired development of report on demand management alternatives for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Until 2001 Dr. Rabl served as General Manager and Director at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). She established EPRI’s load management research program and technology portfolio, including energy storage, energy management, and distributed load control systems. She then held a series of positions with increasing technical, business, and policy responsibilities, covering both sides of the meter -- demand-side management, integrated resource planning, engineering load forecasting, electric transportation, power electronics and power quality, distribution systems, and metering. Dr. Rabl is a Senior Member of IEEE, past Chair of IEEE-USA Energy Policy Committee, and member of the IEEE PES Industry Technical Support Leadership Committee. Veronika is a recipient of the IEEE-USA Professional Achievement Award for Individuals. Veronika holds a Ph.D. from the Ohio State University and an M.S. from the Weizmann Institute, Israel.

Terrible news on out of control AI

I was ever so excited, months ago, when John Kerry and UN Secretary General Guterres called for a new climate extinction office in UN HQ which would generate real information about the biggest real threats and technically valid solutions (using peer review, two-way communicatins and the other tools maximized by "the old NSF"). That seemed to peter out, but I found it even more exciting that the office of the Secretary General asked my friend for a more substantive, detailed response: ================================================ Paul, As an addendum to the letter to the UN Sec-Gen (attached) on the proposed UN Office of Strategic Threats, we were asked to give a paragraph on each of these with weblink(s) on best research so far --Weakening of the Earth's magnetic shield that protects us from deadly solar radiation -- Massive discharges of hydrogen sulfate (H2S) from de-oxygenated oceans, caused by advanced global warming ----Malicious nanotechnology (including the "gray goo" problem) ----Loss of control over future forms of artificial intelligence ---A single individual acting alone, who could one day create and deploy a weapon of mass destruction (most likely from synthetic biology) ---Nuclear war escalation ---Uncontrollable, more-severe pandemics -- A particle accelerator accident -- Solar gamma-ray bursts ---An asteroid collision. ============= I replied with technical details, and then summarized the big picture: ---- Key points: 1. It is not a risk that AI or internet of things will go out of control. It is a certainty. The competitive forces (both political and economic) guarantee that higher and higher levels of true artificial general intelligence will be deployed. Smarter systems will dominate over less intelligent and capable systems, in the fast growing world where the number of controllable "things" has already surpassed the human population and "intelligence" is what controls the signals which get through. 2. The massive transformation of the earth already underway is almost certainly NOT unique in our galaxy, let alone our cosmos. It is part of a massive long-standing system of evolution, depicted in many new actual photographs like the one attached. If we adapt intelligently enough to the new cyberearth, before entropy catches up with it (as it is already doing in our out of control world internet), we can become like the living connected nodes in this vast network of dark matter connecting and shaping small nodes like our galaxy. But if we reject the needs of adaptation, and do not keep up with greater intelligence and connection between humans, cybersystems and the living natural world of our solar system, we can easily be washed away by the kinds of currents already destabilizing markets, legal frameworks and battlefields already. Highly intelligent decisions can learn to be cooperative, or even be designed for true social connection, but to try to "control" them is utterly unrealistic. No one should trust those who promise to do so. 3. Only the highest, more connected exercise of our human potential, our connections with nature, and the very highest levels of artificial general intelligence (AGI) could give us hope of surviving and keeping up with the visible competition across our cosmos. True AGI is based on GOALS or VALUES, as in the most powerful new breakthroughs we now have in RLADP, defined in what I sent you already, and in the links. (I hope some of you can recall/retrieve that, and use somehow.) Just FYI, I attach two totally new papers, one an abstract accepted to the IEEE QCE21 conference and one submitted yesterday to an Elsevier journal (for which odds look quite good). These give links to the best AGI known to most people yet, but also a pathway to build Quantum AGI (QAGI), a level of AGI which has not yet been discussed by anyone else before. There is simulation work and new experiments which I hope I can discuss more publically before too long. ================================ ================================= The SLIGHTLY more complete explanation of the risk I sent before this: Hi, Jerry! You asked me for climate and James for grey goo. But I feel I owe you a few comments on 4, uncontrolled AI. By the way, IEEE has just widely distributed the announcement of my winning the Frank Rosenblatt Award, their top award for Computational Intelligence: 2021 IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award “For development of backpropagation and fundamental contributions to reinforcement learning and time series analysis ======================================= The truth is that very few policy makers understand the real tradeoffs and possibilities, and what is going on under their nose, regarding uncontrolled "new types of AI." That includes the Lifeboat Foundation and the vast communities of enthusiasts and worriers. A major part of the threat is that so many people are making decisions and forming opinions without knowing key basics, even in the software development community itself. By the way, Karl Schroder in the MP circle has a kind of natural understanding of where AGI might REALLY be going much more valid than what the verbal policy "experts" seem to imagine. But for me, the problem is where to begin in summarizing the full story, and which of the thousands of backup documents to begin with. Maybe it is better done by accepting Metta's invitation to do a (citeable) Zoom DISCUSSION, based on your questions, after you have a little time to scan this email and sources like http://www.werbos.com/How_to%20Build_Past_Emerging_Internet_Chaos.htm. Or some of the youtubes, which range from trying to simplify, to hard core technical reality in the very best venues. ONE WAY to pose the issue is to ask: "What could AGI do to us? Will it be uncontrolled?" One way to DEFINE AGI is .. a type of information processing systems designed to LEARN to maximize some kind of hardwired utility function. True AGI are an integration of two hard core universal technologies, the PREDICTION and the OPTIMIZATION aspect. ANYONE WHO INSTALLS A TRUE AGI must hardwire a decision or system to evaluate the bottom line of what it is supposed to maximize. This is an absolute unavoidable reality; efforts to wiggle around it just hide the path and raise the risks. There are LEVELS and LEVELS of learning and cognitive capability, from the lowest lamprey kind of artificial brain, to rat level, to human level, to sapient level, and beyond, to new types of quantum and multimodular systems which most people think are science fiction but which others are quietly deploying already in ways which start to control human lives. LIMITING the level of AGI intelligence is no solution. NSF and NASA once studied plans for lunar development which would exploit the moon by deploying hordes of "artificial metal cockroaches" -- systems intelligent enough to survive and dominate, but not refined enough to benefit humans or even avoid longer-term risks. The PRESENT TRENDS in AI deployment, both in governments and corporations, are very similar or worse, moving towards what we call a "Nash equilibrium", very popular among many program designers but likely to cause fatal instability in the global system, by many paths, not least of them slaughterbots and human unemployment. Many believe slaughterbots are just sci fi, but some of us have seen them. One source proving that you cannot trust what most hopeful "experts" tell you is: http://1dddas.org/activities/infosymbiotics-dddas2020-october-2-4-2020/dddas2020-video-presentations The sheer diversity is amazing. RTX and PWC, however, already demonstrate capabilities others consider impossible, and the new IEEE work goes well beyond that. Luda and I have new papers on how to build quantum AGI (QAGI), a huge step beyond the AGI we designed in the past, and I am very worried about where to place them to navigate between being too open and being too restrictive. IEEE QCE2021 has accepted my abstract connecting QAGI to climate, but where to put the mathematical details and how to navigate dysfunctional politics? "Nash equilibrium" is another term for war of all against all. Best of luck, Paul More on the actual AGI situation: My concern is that AGI development is like riding a bicycle, where slowing down OR EVEN NOT GOING FASTER ON THE DEEP level may be riskier and more unstable. PRESENT trend is a "Nash game" of developers working for governments and corporations, moving fast to deploy top down low intelligence solutions. Ironically, part of this is my fault, because they are moving on the path up to mammal-level AI maximizing a central U over time, treating humans more and more as things in the internet of things. They do it because the math and the tools are THERE. SOME hope lies in Sustainable Intelligent Internet, a different KIND of optimization design, based on RLADP with maximum full use and development of mundane human potential. That's another level of design challenge, NOT BEING advanced in a mathematically well-grounded and integrated way ANYWHERE yet. It is POSSIBLE, as I outlined. But in truth, Pareto optimality and issues like climate survival require MORE, and that is why quantum and noosphere connections are important. The utility determining system is crucial to the outcome.