Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk is a Cambridge University research center founded in 2012 by the philosopher Huw Price, the cosmologist Martin Rees, and the Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn to study catastrophic risks from advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and environmental collapse.
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) is a research center within Cambridge University founded in 2012 to study risks that could threaten the survival of humanity, with a focus on those arising from advanced technology. It was established by the philosopher Huw Price, the cosmologist Martin Rees, and the Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn, and it became one of the first academic homes for the study of AI, biotechnology, and ecological risk, sharing personnel and concerns with the Effective Altruism and longtermist networks and with sister institutions such as the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.12
Founding and Funding
The center traces its origin to a 2011 conversation in a Copenhagen taxi, where Price, the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, shared a ride with Tallinn on the way to a conference dinner and the two found common ground on the dangers of advanced AI. Price recruited Rees, the Astronomer Royal and a former president of the Royal Society, and the three announced the center in 2012; Tallinn supplied the seed funding that paid for its establishment and early activities. The astrophysicist and policy researcher Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh served as founding executive director, building the center from concept to a staffed research group between 2013 and 2015 and leading its major projects through 2020.13
Beyond Tallinn's private donation, CSER's research drew institutional support including funding from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, which backed its "Managing Extreme Technological Risk" project. The center was housed administratively within the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge, giving an academic base to a field that had largely existed outside universities. Its founders assembled a scientific advisory board that included the physicist Stephen Hawking, the AI researcher Stuart Russell, the Harvard geneticist George Church, the global-health figure Peter Piot, and the entrepreneur Elon Musk.24
Research and the Leverhulme Spin-Off
CSER organizes its work around several families of catastrophic risk: risks from artificial intelligence and machine superintelligence, risks from biotechnology and engineered pandemics, environmental and ecological risk including climate change, and the broader study of how extreme technological risks should be governed. Its researchers produce academic papers, policy reports, and workshops, and the center has positioned itself as a bridge between the technical AI-safety community and mainstream science and policy institutions, in contrast to the more activist Future of Life Institute that Tallinn cofounded in 2014.25
In 2016 CSER launched its first spin-off, the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), a Cambridge-based center funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Price that concentrates on the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence over the long term. The two centers operate in close collaboration, with overlapping staff and research agendas, and together they made Cambridge one of the principal academic hubs for the study of AI risk in the United Kingdom. CSER has continued to publish on AI governance, biosecurity, and global catastrophic risk under successive directors following Ó hÉigeartaigh's tenure.26
Sources
- "About Us," Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge, on the 2012 founding by Huw Price, Martin Rees, and Jaan Tallinn and the center's mission. https://www.cser.ac.uk/about-us/ ↩
- "Could science destroy the world? These scholars want to save us from a modern-day Frankenstein," Science / AAAS, on the founders, the research areas of AI, biotech, and climate, the advisory board including Hawking, Russell, Church, Piot, and Musk, and Tallinn's funding. https://www.science.org/content/article/could-science-destroy-world-these-scholars-want-save-us-modern-day-frankenstein ↩
- "Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh," Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, on the 2011 Copenhagen taxi meeting between Price and Tallinn, Tallinn's seed funding, and Ó hÉigeartaigh's role as founding executive director from 2013 to 2015. https://www.cser.ac.uk/team/sean-o-heigeartaigh/ ↩
- "Managing Extreme Technological Risk with the University of Cambridge," Templeton World Charity Foundation, on its funding of CSER's Managing Extreme Technological Risk project. https://www.templetonworldcharity.org/blog/managing-extreme-technological-risk-university-cambridge-video ↩
- "CSER: Playing with Technological Dominoes," Future of Life Institute, on CSER's research themes across AI, biotechnology, and environmental risk. https://futureoflife.org/biotech/playing-with-technological-dominoes/ ↩
- "Huw Price," Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, on the 2016 launch of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence as CSER's first spin-off, led by Price. https://www.cser.ac.uk/team/huw-price-2/ ↩
Hidden connections 2
Entities named in this page's prose without an explicit wikilink — surfaced by scanning for known titles and aliases.
Local network
Centre for the Study of Existential Risk's direct connections. Click any node to navigate, drag to pan, scroll (or pinch) to zoom. + 2‑hop expands the neighborhood one level further.
An interactive diagram of Centre for the Study of Existential Risk's connections, drawn on a canvas and explored with a pointer. The same connections are listed as links in the Connected and Mentioned-in sections below.
Legend — how to read this graph
- People
- Organizations
- Programs
- Events
- Concepts
- Places
Larger = more mentions across the vault.
Explicit link (wikilink between entries).
Inferred connection (name co-mention) — toggle with “Inferred”.
Gold ring — a bridge entity linking distant clusters.
Accent ring — your current selection.