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Existential risks have a cluster of features that make it useful to identify them as a special category: the extreme magnitude of the harm that would come from an existential disaster; the futility of the trial-and-error approach; the lack of evolved biological and cultural coping methods; the fact that existential risk dilution is a global ...
- Abstract
- Policy Implications
- Qualitative risk categories
- Magnitude of expected loss in existential catastrophe
- Maxipok
- 2. Classification of existential risk
- Permanent stagnation
- Flawed realisation
- Subsequent ruination
- 3. Capability and value
- Convertibility of resources into value
- Some other ethical perspectives
- Keeping our options alive
- TECHNOLOGY
- INSIGHT
- 4. Outlook
- Author Information
Existential risks are those that threaten the entire future of humanity. Many theories of value imply that even relatively small reductions in net existential risk have enormous expected value. Despite their importance, issues surrounding human-extinction risks and related hazards remain poorly understood. In this article, I clarify the concept of ...
Existential risk is a concept that can focus long-term global efforts and sustainability concerns. The biggest existential risks are anthropogenic and related to potential future technologies. A moral case can be made that existential risk reduction is strictly more important than any other global public good. Sustainability should be reconceptuali...
Since a risk is a prospect that is negatively evaluated, the seriousness of a risk—indeed, what is to be regarded Figure 1. Meta-level uncertainty. Source: Ord et al., 2010. Factoring in the fallibility of our first-order risk assessments can amplify the probability of risks assessed to be extremely small. An initial analysis (left side) gives a sm...
Holding probability constant, risks become more serious as we move toward the upper-right region of Figure 2. For any fixed probability, existential risks are thus more serious than other risk categories. But just how much more serious might not be intuitively obvious. One might think we could get a grip on how bad an existen-tial catastrophe would...
These considerations suggest that the loss in expected value resulting from an existential catastrophe is so enormous that the objective of reducing existential risks should be a dominant consideration whenever we act out of an impersonal concern for humankind as a whole. It may be useful to adopt the following rule of thumb for such impersonal mor...
To bring attention to the full spectrum of existential risk, we can distinguish four classes of such risk: human extinction, permanent stagnation, flawed realisation, and subsequent ruination. We define these in Table 1 below: By ‘humanity’ we here mean Earth-originating intelli-gent life and by ‘technological maturity’ we mean the attainment of ca...
Humanity survives but never reaches technological maturity. Subclasses: unrecovered collapse, plateauing, recurrent collapse
Humanity reaches technological maturity but in a way that is dismally and irremediably flawed. Subclasses: unconsummated realisation, ephemeral realisation
Humanity reaches technological maturity in a way that gives good future prospects, yet subsequent developments cause the permanent ruination of those prospects. Source: Author. and our other close relatives, as would occur in many (though not all) human-extinction scenarios. Further-more, even if another intelligent species were to evolve to take o...
Some further remarks will help clarify the links between capability, value, and existential risk.
Because humanity’s future is potentially astronomically long, the integral of losses associated with persistent inefficiencies is very large. This is why flawed-realisation and subsequent-ruination scenarios constitute existential catastrophes even though they do not necessarily involve extinction.20 It might be well worth a temporary dip in short-...
We have thus far considered existential risk from the per-spective of utilitarianism (combined with several simplify-ing assumptions). We may briefly consider how the issue might appear when viewed through the lenses of some other ethical outlooks. For example, the philosopher Robert Adams outlines a different view on these matters: I believe a bet...
These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alter-native, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate. Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know—at least not in con-crete detail—what outcomes would count as...
Humanity’s current Dangerous regions Once in this region, safe... COORDINATION
Sources: Author. Notes: An ideal situation might be one in which we have a very high level of technology, excellent global coordination, and great insight into how our capabilities can be used. It does not follow that getting any amount of additional technology, coordination, or insight is always good for us. Perhaps it is essential that our growth...
We have seen that reducing existential risk emerges as a dominant priority in many aggregative consequentialist moral theories (and as a very important concern in many other moral theories). The concept of existential risk can thus help the morally or altruistically motivated to iden-tify actions that have the highest expected value. In par-ticular...
Nick Bostrom, Professor, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University; and Director of the Martin School. Future of Humanity Institute in the Oxford
1.1. Existential risk and uncertainty. An existential risk is one that threatens the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development (Bostrom 2002).
Mar 27, 2013 · Existential risk is a concept that can focus long-term global efforts and sustainability concerns. • The biggest existential risks are anthropogenic and related to potential future technologies. • A moral case can be made that existential risk reduction is strictly more important than any other global public good. •
- Nick Bostrom
- 2013
Nick Bostrom defines an existential risk as an event that “could cause human extinction or permanently and drastically curtail humanity’s potential.” An existential risk is distinct from a global catastrophic risk (GCR) in its scope — a GCR is catastrophic at a global scale, but retains the possibility for recovery.
Mar 6, 2012 · Most worrying to Bostrom is the subset of existential risks that arise from human technology, a subset that he expects to grow in number and potency over the next century.
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Feb 16, 2019 · Existential risk has been defined by Nick Bostrom (J Evol Technol 9 (1):1–31, 2002) as “one where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential”.
