As I see it there are three main categories of risk: bio, nano, and AI/robotics. These man-made risks make up the vast majority of the threat magnitude over the coming century and deserve most of the attention.
Threats of low probability include asteroid strikes, supervolcano eruptions, alien invasions, simulation getting shut down, and many others. Though there is disagreement on whether nuclear war, particle accelerator disasters, or runaway climate change deserve to be counted as substantial-probability extinction threats over the coming century, I would say they are not.
A word on focusing on low probability threats alongside higher probability threats. Mentioning low probability threats just for the sake of comprehensiveness is rhetorically damaging. It distracts from the central thrust by introducing superfluous information. Worse, it can damage credibility of the entire message. Whether fair or unfair, we have seen the doom-worriers of the Large Hadron Collider heavily maligned by both scientists and laypeople in print and online. Even if an x-risk mitigator thought there was some probability of planetary doom due to the LHC, say one in a hundred thousand, the credibility sacrifice of pushing the issue is bound to detract from one’s ability to advocate mitigation of other, much higher-probability threats. So it should be avoided. Of course, if the LHC occupies a dominant portion of the risk pie in one’s personal estimate, it would be rational to devote attention to that, despite the credibility penalty.
Regarding natural vs. artificial threats, there is a credible argument that all natural threats are of substantially low probability. We’re still here. Homonids have been around for at least two million years, despite radically inferior numbers and technology for 99.9% of that time. If our ancestors could survive natural disasters, then we’ll be able to also, with our far superior technology and numbers. Asteroids capable of causing major extinctions only strike the Earth about once every hundred million years or less. In the 600 million or so years that there has been complex multicellular life, there have only been six major extinctions, if you include the present one that humans are causing.
For the central risks that I mentioned, which can also be abbreviated GNR (genetics, nanotechnology, robotics) or GRAIN (genetics, robotics, AI, nanotechnology), I recommend the three S’s: science, standards, and security. Scientific investigation of the risks provides a sound basis for further policy. This takes actual money and work, and won’t occur automatically. Taxpayers should foot the bill. Free market incentives for self-regulation are not enough. Industries have an incentive to downplay the magnitude of risk for short-term gain. I say this as a capitalist and advocate of science and progress. (In our polarized political climate, such disclaimers are unfortunately mandatory.)
After science comes standards. All of an industry, say the nanotechnology industry, or the synthetic biology community, needs to come up with some basic set of safety rules, both for individual workers and for the effects of their industry on the planet and environment as a whole. Examples of industry standards are too numerous to list. How much government involvement should be included in the approach will vary depending on your political philosophy. Too much meddling will cripple an industry and encourage clandestine workarounds, and too little meddling may cause an industry to adopt a “no rules” policy that maximizes profits while ignoring risk. If your libertarian philosophy causes an industry to pursue dangerous practices that increase global risk, then your philosophy has failed to adapt to the dangers of the future. If your interventionist philosophy causes an industry to become frustrated and transfer their operations to another country with no rules, then you’ve failed again. Insofar as it’s possible, discard your context-insensitive political beliefs and adopt context-sensitive, non-partisan approaches to these new challenges. Only then will enough people actually agree with you that the approach is adopted and makes a difference.
After standards comes security. The standards have to actually be enforced, or they are useless. If dangerous genetically engineered microbes are not kept under lock and key, unsavory individuals may get ahold of them and use them to fulfill nefarious ends. Security measures will be bolstered by transparency and increasing surveillance and sousveillance, a natural consequence when you combine human curiosity and cheaper/smaller cameras. Local and global agencies have to cooperate as effectively as possible to ensure that standards are being enforced, both in private and public realms.
Those are my thoughts for today. In summary:
1) if you’re an academic, author, or journalist, write about extinction risks,
2) if you’re otherwise involved in science and technology, help create structures to manage global risk,
3) if you’re someone that makes a decent salary or otherwise has money or resources, consider contributing some of it to efforts to mitigate extinction risk,
4) if you’re anybody else, think carefully about the issue and get informed.
The goal is a world where the annual probability of risk is extremely low, approaching zero. Even if the annual probability is just one in a million, then after a million years we’re likely to destroy ourselves. It would be great if the human race and our descendants and variants lives for a long time, billions of years, colonizing the universe and living happy and fulfilling lives. Our thoughts and actions at this crucial juncture could make the difference.
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