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What We Owe the Future: in conversation with William MacAskill

Hosted by the Marshall Institute

In-person and online public event (Old Theatre, Old Building)

Speaker

Dr William MacAskill

Dr William MacAskill

Chair

Professor Stephan Chambers

Professor Stephan Chambers

Does what we do today determine the happiness or misery of trillions of people in the future? In this event, William MacAskill will discuss his recent book What We Owe the Future, and his argument for ‘longtermism’, which proposes that positively influencing the future is the moral priority of our time. MacAskill proposes that by making wise moral decisions today, we can navigate a multitude of crises – bioengineered pandemics, technological stagnation, climate change, and transformative AI – more fairly for generations to come.

Meet our speaker and chair

William MacAskill (@willmacaskill) is an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford. A Forbes 30 under 30 social entrepreneur, he also cofounded the nonprofits Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Y Combinator-backed 80,000 Hours, which together have moved over $200 million to effective charities. He’s the author of Doing Good Better, Moral Uncertainty, and What We Owe the Future.

Stephan Chambers is the inaugural director of the Marshall Institute at LSE. He is also Professor in Practice at the Department of Management at LSE and Course Director for the Executive Masters in Social Business and Entrepreneurship. Before joining LSE, he was the Co-Founder of the Skoll World Forum, Chair of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Director of International Strategy at Saїd Business School, Oxford University.More about this event

This event will be available to watch on LSE Live. LSE Live is the new home for our live streams, allowing you to tune in and join the global debate at LSE, wherever you are in the world. If you can't attend live, a video will be made available shortly afterwards on LSE's YouTube channel.

The Marshall Institute (@LSEMarshall) works to improve the impact and effectiveness of private action for public benefit through research, teaching and convening.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEMacAskill

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A podcast of this event is available to download from What We Owe the Future: in conversation with William MacAskill. 

A video of this event is available to watch at What We Owe the Future: in conversation with William MacAskill

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This event will be streamed live on YouTube.

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