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RECENT BLOG POSTS
Rob Bensinger: wrote MIRI News: October 2015
Max Tegmark: wrote AI safety at the United Nations
Max Tegmark: wrote Hawking Reddit AMA on AI
Viktoriya Krakovna: wrote Happy Petrov Day!
Max Tegmark: wrote We're hiring!
James Hogan: wrote Future of Life Institute Summer 2015 Newsletter
Rob Bensinger: wrote MIRI News: September 2015
RECENT COMMENTS
Stuart Armstrong: commented on Ackerman defends AI weapons: From the comment I posted there (note that I am an outlier in the FHI in ...
Max Tegmark: commented on Article: Research Challenges for Safe AI Systems: Thanks Jacob for doing this!

FLI BLOG
January 25, 2021
Happy Petrov Day!
Viktoriya Krakovna (FLI Administrator) wrote on Sep. 26, 2015 @ 17:19 GMT
32 years ago today, Soviet army officer Stanislav Petrov refused to follow protocol and averted a nuclear war.
From 9/26 is Petrov Day:
"On September 26th, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was the officer on duty when the warning system reported a US missile launch. Petrov kept calm, suspecting a computer error.
Then the system reported another US missile launch.
And another, and another, and another.
What had actually happened, investigators later determined, was sunlight on high-altitude clouds aligning with the satellite view on a US missile base.
[...] The policy of the Soviet Union called for launch on warning. The Soviet Union's land radar could not detect missiles over the horizon, and waiting for positive identification would limit the response time to minutes. Petrov's report would be relayed to his military superiors, who would decide whether to start a nuclear war.
Petrov decided that, all else being equal, he would prefer not to destroy the world. He sent messages declaring the launch detection a false alarm, based solely on his personal belief that the US did not seem likely to start an attack using only five missiles."
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From 9/26 is Petrov Day:
"On September 26th, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was the officer on duty when the warning system reported a US missile launch. Petrov kept calm, suspecting a computer error.
Then the system reported another US missile launch.
And another, and another, and another.
What had actually happened, investigators later determined, was sunlight on high-altitude clouds aligning with the satellite view on a US missile base.
[...] The policy of the Soviet Union called for launch on warning. The Soviet Union's land radar could not detect missiles over the horizon, and waiting for positive identification would limit the response time to minutes. Petrov's report would be relayed to his military superiors, who would decide whether to start a nuclear war.
Petrov decided that, all else being equal, he would prefer not to destroy the world. He sent messages declaring the launch detection a false alarm, based solely on his personal belief that the US did not seem likely to start an attack using only five missiles."