Week 4: Pandemics and existential risks

What is existential risk?

• An existential risk is a threat to the life of an individual or group.

• An existential risk is a risk that threatens the destruction of humanity's longterm potential.

• An existential risk is a risk to the continued existence of effective altruism as a community.

• An existential risk is the risk that existence will no longer be understandable by humans.

Answer explanation

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.

The present generation lives in the most prosperous period in human history. Why is it plausibly also the most dangerous?

• The chance that we discover a technology with more destructive power than we have the ability to wisely use.

• The explosive growth of the human population may cause overpopulation

• The end of a unipolar world and rising chance of Great Power Conflict

• Artificial Intelligence

Climate change is certainly a major risk to civilisation and biodiversity, and its destabilising effects could exacerbate other risks (inc. risks of nuclear conflict).

What, however, is the main reason EA does not consider it to be as high a priority as other problems, such as artificial intelligence and engineered pandemics?

• It is not a neglected cause area.

• Interventions related to climate change are less tractable than those in other cause areas

• It is impossible to prevent, and will take a long time to happen.

• It looks unlikely that even 13 degrees of warming would directly cause the extinction of humanity.

Answer explanation

From a longtermist perspective, other risks like nuclear war, unaligned AI, and bio risks are more likely to result in outright extinction, and therefore the permanent curtailment of humanity's potential.

From a short-termist perspective, global health and development interventions seem to be more effective than climate change interventions.

Which of the following is NOT an existential risk?

• Climate Change

• Pandemics

• Supervolcanic Eruptions

• Hyperinflation

• Artificial Intelligence

The Biological Weapons Convention's (BWC)'s total annual budget is equivalent to...

• The annual budget of the World Health Organisation

• The annual budget of an average McDonald's franchise

• The annual budget of Wikipedia