CATALYST is a global, digital enrichment programme for 13-17 year-olds developed and delivered by Winchester College. CATALYST provides unique opportunities to develop key skills beyond the curriculum such as critical thinking, negotiation, debate, and leadership. SFC1 (Year 12) students Moradeke and Katya provided their thoughts on the programme below.
‘Will we engineer our own extinction?’
"SFC1 Academic Scholars took part in the Winchester College CATALYST challenge comprised of a series of thought-provoking activities, prompting us to ponder over the future of humanity in light of technological advancements.
At 5.00pm on 27th April, we entered ‘the Yard’, the CATALYST virtual interactive space, consisting of various rooms, where, in groups, we completed the escape room challenge. It allowed us to become acquainted with the platform and its features whilst navigating through the rooms and enhancing our problem-solving skills. We found the last task, which entailed the Fibonacci sequence, particularly challenging.
After the light-hearted but testing introduction, we explored a series of potential technological developments, which are all currently - to different extents - under way, and we were encouraged to consider their likely positive and negative effects on the planet. As we sorted tiles into the categories, we were deciding which inventions would be the most effective in improving our living standards without making our society similar to those of dystopian novels.
What resonated with us the most was the discussion of the benefits, and threats posed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) building on our recent Three Humans on the Sofa event in College ‘Can and should AI surpass human capabilities?’ We exchanged ideas on policies to ensure that AI’s role in our society is ‘empowering not overpowering’.
At the end of the session, we were introduced to the looming ‘black ball’ in society’s ‘urn of inventions’, a theory proposed by Nick Bostrom, suggesting that humanity might invent something and thus ‘engineer our own extinction’ due to the impossibility of ‘uninventing’ our creations."
Cookies
We'd like to set cookies to understand how you use this site. We use services such as YouTube, Flockler and Hireroad that may also use third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our Cookies Policy.
Essential Cookies
We use these for core functionality, such as storing this cookie consent preference. These are loaded automatically and cannot be disabled by the user.
Analytics Cookies
We use Google Analytics to track visits to our website and how users interact with our website. This helps us improve the way our website works.
Personalised Advertising Cookies
We use Google Ads Conversions & Facebook Pixel to measure how you use and interact with our website and with our advertisements.
Our Partners Cookies
These cookies may be set by third party websites and do things like measure how you view videos or other content that is embedded on our site.
Limited spaces available to join CLC as a Sixth Form Day Girl this September