“A Fair Go”
Professor Huw Price
Huw Price, retiring Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, reflects on the journey that brought him to Cambridge
In his Inaugural Lecture as Bertrand Russell Professor in November 2012, Huw Price (Darwin 1977) expounded on the professed Australian value of the “fair go”. “All young people should be allowed to choose for themselves what they want to do with their lives when they grow up,” he said. Huw made his own choices leading to his prestigious post, but his own opportunities stemmed from WWII and the fair go at an education that his father gained following demobilisation.
“My father’s story is remarkable,” he says. “He came from a family who were poor even by South Wales standards. He was working on the railways from the age of 14, carrying a grease pot for the person who greased the axles.” He was called up, joining the RAF and serving in Italy and Egypt. He was able to study in evening classes though, and to matriculate and go to university once the war ended, eventually completing a DPhil at Oxford in Tudor Parliamentary history. Huw’s mother, on the other hand, was the family’s first connection with Cambridge. A student at the London School of Economics, she was evacuated and housed at Peterhouse during the War, and so was the first in the family to cycle the city’s streets.
Thirty-five years later, Huw came to Cambridge to undertake a PhD in philosophy. As a boy, he had wanted to be an astronomer, and studied mathematics — incidentally Russell’s original area of study — during his undergraduate degree at the Australian National University (ANU), and for his Master’s at Oxford, where he would go to lectures by such luminaries as Roger Penrose.
It is one of the terrific advantages of Cambridge and Oxford — to have opportunities to attend lectures by the world’s greatest thinkers.
At Cambridge, Huw enjoyed listening to Martin Rees, who was to be Master of Trinity College by the time he returned to take up the post of Bertrand Russell Professor, in 2011. The Bertrand Russell Professorship has existed at the University of Cambridge since 1896 but was endowed through the support of more than 80 friends of the faculty, former staff and alumni and named in 2010. Particularly generous gifts were made by Trinity College, the late Professor Hugh Mellor (Pembroke 1956) — who incidentally had been Huw’s PhD supervisor, and a key influence in his decision to move from mathematics to philosophy — and Professor Jane Heal (New Hall 1964), ensuring that the chair will exist in perpetuity.
While Huw centred his Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge on a famous lecture of Russell’s on causation, it is Russell’s work for nuclear disarmament that he admires the most, and which is reflected in his own recent career. Huw has played a crucial role in projects at Cambridge around researching and analysing the existential risks facing the planet. He was one of the co-founders of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) in 2012, an initiative that grew from meeting Jann Tallinn (co-founder of Skype) and discovering a shared interest in the future of artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and its possible threats to humanity. Together with Lord Rees, they established the interdisciplinary research centre to “study existential risks, develop collaborative strategies to reduce them, and foster a global community of academics, technologists and policymakers working to safeguard humanity”.
It’s a big call, and one that seems particularly pertinent given the present state of the world where we find ourselves in lockdown as a result of an international pandemic, with the resulting economic downturns and political instability likely to have reverberations for many years to come. Huw suggests that the present situation might act as “some kind of warning” for the future.
Huw’s interest in artificial intelligence drove the establishment of another centre, when in 2015 he led a group that won funding of £10m from the Leverhulme Trust for a 10-year Major Research Centre, the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. An interdisciplinary centre spanning four Universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial and Berkeley), it concentrates on AI from perhaps a more positive angle — aiming at developing and promoting policies that ensure we humans get it right, when it comes to creating AI.
“The two Centres have a lot of crossovers,” he says, and he is particularly proud of them both. “Their work of foresight is so important. I am sure they will continue to exist long after I have left.” In the immediate future, however, Huw will remain Academic Director of the Leverhulme Centre after retiring from the Faculty of Philosophy.
Huw believes the next great challenge is climate change: a challenge about which the Centres and indeed the University must do more, simply because there is so much more to do. It is a huge job, though, to corral the vast amount of expertise at Cambridge, and point it all in the one, incredibly important direction. It is possible though, he suggests, in the same way that CSER and the Leverhulme Centre are possible; because of Cambridge’s rich intellectual environment, which enables the cross-fertilisation of ideas and the kind of interdisciplinary thinking that is at the heart of the University and the Colleges. In 2019, the University launched Cambridge Zero, aimed at creating a zero-carbon future.
The next Bertrand Russell Philosopher, Alexander Bird, will take up the post on 1 October, joining the Faculty in July as Director of Research. His interests in the philosophy of science and medicine seem more relevant than ever at this moment, with society turned outside-in by a new virus, and “will certainly strengthen the Faculty,” says Huw.
If Huw has a regret, it is that his contribution to the two Centres drew him away somewhat from the Faculty of Philosophy and the subject that has been the core of his life’s work. It seems that the man whose most famous book, Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point, explores the mystery of the nature of time itself has discovered that the greatest problem with time is that there is never enough. “It’s been a great privilege to be at Cambridge,” he says. “I’ve had much more that a fair go! Working with such wonderful colleagues and students in the Faculty, being at Trinity, playing a part in the creation of two fantastic centres… there have been so many highlights”.
For his colleagues, students, for Trinity and for Cambridge, and for all those involved with and influenced by the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Huw’s tenure as Bertrand Russell Professor has undoubtedly been a great privilege, too.
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