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12 risks that threaten human civilisation

globinfo freexchange

A study by the Global Challenges Foundation aims on a first approach about potential threats that could actually destroy human civilization. The study claims 12 major threats belonging to four general sectors of current risks, exogenic risks, emerging risks and global policy risks.

Briefly:

1. Extreme Climate Change

As for all risks there are uncertainties in the estimates, and warming could be much more extreme than the middle estimates suggest. Feedback loops could mean global average temperatures increase by 4°C or even 6°C over pre-industrial levels. Feedbacks could be the release of methane from permafrost or the dieback of the Amazon rainforest. The impact of global warming would be strongest in poorer countries, which could become completely uninhabitable for the highest range of warming.

Mass deaths and famines, social collapse and mass migration are certainly possible in this scenario. Combined with shocks to the agriculture and biosphere-dependent industries of the more developed countries, this could lead to global conflict and possibly civilisation collapse. Further evidence of the risk comes from signs that past civilisation collapses have been driven by climate change.

5 key factors:

- The uncertainties in climate sensitivity models, including the tail.
- The likelihood - or not – of global coordination on controlling emissions.
- The future uptake of low carbon economies, including energy, mobility and food systems.
- Whether technological innovations will improve or worsen the situation, and by how much.
- The long-term climate impact caused by global warming.

2. Global Pandemic

An epidemic of infectious disease that has spread through human populations across a large region or even worldwide. There are grounds for suspecting that such a high- impact epidemic is more probable than usually assumed. All the features of an extremely devastating disease already exist in nature: essentially incurable (Ebola), nearly always fatal (rabies), extremely infectious (common cold), and long incubation periods (HIV).

If a pathogen were to emerge that somehow combined these features (and influenza has demonstrated antigenic shift, the ability to combine features from different viruses), its death toll would be extreme. The world has changed considerably, making comparisons with the past problematic.Today it has better sanitation and medical research, as well as national and supra-national institutions dedicated to combating diseases. But modern transport and dense human population allow infections to spread much more rapidly, and slums can be breeding grounds for disease.

5 key factors:

- What the true probability distribution for pandemics is, especially at the tail.
- The capacity of international health systems to deal with an extreme pandemic.
- How fast medical research can proceed in an emergency.
- How mobility of goods and people, as well as population density, will affect pandemic transmission.
- Whether humans can develop novel and effective anti-pandemic solutions.

3. Nuclear War

The likelihood of a full-scale nuclear war between the USA and Russia has probably decreased. Still, the potential for deliberate or accidental nuclear conflict has not been removed, with some estimates putting the risk in the next century or so at around 10%. A larger impact would depend on whether or not the war triggered what is often called a nuclear winter or something similar – the creation of a pall of smoke high in the stratosphere that would plunge temperatures below freezing around the globe and possibly also destroy most of the ozone layer.

The detonations would need to start firestorms in the targeted cities, which could lift the soot up into the stratosphere. The risks are severe and recent models have confirmed the earlier analysis. The disintegration of the global food supply would make mass starvation and state collapse likely.

5 key factors:

- How relations between current and future nuclear powers develop.
- The probability of accidental war.
- Whether disarmament efforts will succeed in reducing the number of nuclear warheads.
- The likelihood of a nuclear winter.
- The long-term effects of a nuclear war on climate, infrastructure and technology. A new category of global risk.

4. Ecological Collapse

This is where an ecosystem suffers a drastic, possibly permanent, reduction in carrying capacity for all organisms, often resulting in mass extinction. Humans are part of the global ecosystem and so fundamentally depend on it. Species extinction is now far faster than the historic rate, and attempts to quantify a safe ecological operating space place humanity well outside it.

Many of the problems of ecological degradation interact to multiply the damage and (unlike previous, localised collapses) the whole world is potentially at risk. It seems plausible that some human lifestyles could be sustained in a relatively ecosystem independent way, at relatively low costs. Whether this can be achieved on a large scale in practice, especially during a collapse, will be a technological challenge and whether it is something we want is an ethical question.

5 key factors:

- The extent to which humans are dependent on the ecosystem.
- Whether there will be effective political measures taken to protect the ecosystem on a large scale.
- The likelihood of the emergence of sustainable economies.
- The positive and negative impacts on the ecosystems of both wealth and poverty.
- The long-term effects of an ecological collapse on ecosystems.

5. Global System Collapse

An economic or societal collapse on the global scale. The term has been used to describe a broad range of conditions. Often economic collapse is accompanied by social chaos, civil unrest and sometimes a breakdown of law and order. Societal collapse usually refers to the fall or disintegration of human societies, often along with their life support systems. The world economic and political system is made up of many actors with many objectives and many links between them.

Such intricate, interconnected systems are subject to unexpected system-wide failures caused by the structure of the network – even if each component of the network is reliable. This gives rise to systemic risk, when parts that individually may function well become vulnerable when connected as a system to a self-reinforcing joint risk that can spread from part to part, potentially affecting the entire system and possibly spilling over to related outside systems. Such effects have been observed in ecology, finance and critical infrastructure such as power grids. The possibility of collapse becomes more acute when several independent networks depend on each other.

5 key factors:

- Whether global system collapse will trigger subsequent collapses or fragility in other areas.
- What the true trade-off is between efficiency and resilience.
- Whether effective regulation and resilience can be developed.
- Whether an external disruption will trigger a collapse.
- Whether an internal event will trigger a collapse.

6. Super-volcano

Any volcano capable of producing an eruption with an ejecta volume greater than 1,000 km3. This is thousands of times larger than normal eruptions. The danger from super-volcanoes is the amount of aerosols and dust projected into the upper atmosphere. This dust would absorb the Sun’s rays and cause a global volcanic winter.

The Mt Pinatubo eruption of 1991 caused an average global cooling of surface temperatures by 0.5°C over three years, while the Toba eruption around 70,000 years ago is thought by some to have cooled global temperatures for over two centuries. The effect of these eruptions could be best compared with that of a nuclear war. The eruption would be more violent than the nuclear explosions, but would be less likely to ignite firestorms and other secondary effects.

5 key factors:

- Whether countries will coordinate globally against super-volcano risk and damage.
- The predictability of super-volcanic eruptions.
- How directly destructive an eruption would be.
- The effectiveness of general mitigation efforts.
- How severe the long-term climate effects would be.

7. Major Asteroid Impact

Large asteroid collisions – with objects 5 km or more in size – happen about once every twenty million years and would have an energy a hundred thousand times greater than the largest bomb ever detonated. A land impact would destroy an area the size of a nation like Holland. Larger asteroids could be extinction-level events. Asteroid impacts are probably one of the best understood of all risks in this report.

There has been some discussion about possible methods for deflecting asteroids found on a collision course with the planet. Should an impact occur the main destruction will not be from the initial impact, but from the clouds of dust projected into the upper atmosphere. The damage from such an “impact winter” could affect the climate, damage the biosphere, affect food supplies, and create political instability.

5 key factors:

- Whether detection and tracking of asteroids and other dangerous space objects is sufficiently exhaustive.
- How feasible it is to deflect an asteroid.
- Whether measures such as evacuation could reduce the damage of an impact.
- The short- and long-term climate consequences of a collision.
- Whether our current civilisation could adapt to a post-impact world.

8. Synthetic Biology

The design and construction of biological devices and systems for useful purposes, but adding human intentionality to traditional pandemic risks. Attempts at regulation or self-regulation are currently in their infancy, and may not develop as fast as research does. One of the most damaging impacts from synthetic biology would come from an engineered pathogen targeting humans or a crucial component of the ecosystem.

This could emerge through military or commercial bio-warfare, bio-terrorism (possibly using dual-use products developed by legitimate researchers, and currently unprotected by international legal regimes), or dangerous pathogens leaked from a lab. Of relevance is whether synthetic biology products become integrated into the global economy or biosphere. This could lead to additional vulnerabilities (a benign but widespread synthetic biology product could be specifically targeted as an entry point through which to cause damage).

5 key factors:

- The true destructive potential of synthetic biology, especially the tail risk.
- Whether the field will be successfully regulated, or successfully manage to regulate itself.
- Whether the field will usher in a new era of bio-warfare.
- Whether the tools of synthetic biology can be used defensively to create effective counter measures.
- The dangers of relying on synthetic biologists to estimate the danger of synthetic biology.

9. Nanotechnology

Atomically precise manufacturing, the creation of effective, high-throughput manufacturing processes that operate at the atomic or molecular level. It could create new products – such as smart or extremely resilient materials – and would allow many different groups or even individuals to manufacture a wide range of things. This could lead to the easy construction of large arsenals of conventional or more novel weapons made possible by atomically precise manufacturing.

Of particular relevance is whether nanotechnology allows the construction of nuclear bombs. But many of the world’s current problems may be solvable with the manufacturing possibilities that nanotechnology would offer, such as depletion of natural resources, pollution, climate change, clean water and even poverty. Some have conjectured special self-replicating nanomachines which would be engineered to consume the entire environment. The misuse of medical nanotechnology is another risk scenario.

5 key factors:

- The timeline for nanotech development.
- Which aspects of nanotech research will progress in what order.
- Whether small groups can assemble a weapons arsenal quickly.
- Whether nanotech tools can be used defensively or for surveillance.
- Whether nanotech tools or weaponry are made to be outside human control.

10. Unknown Consequences

These represent the unknown unknowns in the family of global catastrophic challenges. They constitute an amalgamation of all the risks that can appear extremely unlikely in isolation, but can combine to represent a not insignificant proportion of the risk exposure. One resolution to the Fermi paradox – the apparent absence of alien life in the galaxy – is that intelligent life destroys itself before beginning to expand into the galaxy.

Results that increase or decrease the probability of this explanation modify the generic probability of intelligent life (self-)destruction, which includes uncertain risks. Anthropic reasoning can also bound the total risk of human extinction, and hence estimate the unknown component. Nonrisk-specific resilience and post-disaster rebuilding efforts will also reduce the damage from uncertain risks, as would appropriate national and international regulatory regimes. Most of these methods would also help with the more conventional, known risks, and badly need more investment.

5 key factors:

- Whether there will be extensive research into unknown risks and their probabilities.
- The capacity to develop methods for limiting the combined probability of all uncertain risks.
- The capacity for estimating “out of-model” risks.
- The culture of risk assessment in potentially risky areas.
- Whether general, non-risk-specific mitigation or resilience measures are implemented.

11. Artificial Intelligence

AI is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software, and the branch of computer science that develops machines and software with human-level intelligence. The field is often defined as “the study and design of intelligent agents”, systems that perceive their environment and act to maximise their chances of success. Such extreme intelligences could not easily be controlled (either by the groups creating them, or by some international regulatory regime), and would probably act to boost their own intelligence and acquire maximal resources for almost all initial AI motivations.

And if these motivations do not detail the survival and value of humanity, the intelligence will be driven to construct a world without humans. This makes extremely intelligent AIs a unique risk, in that extinction is more likely than lesser impacts. On a more positive note, an intelligence of such power could easily combat most other risks in this report, making extremely intelligent AI into a tool of great potential. There is also the possibility of AI-enabled warfare and all the risks of the technologies that AIs would make possible. An interesting version of this scenario is the possible creation of “whole brain emulations”, human brains scanned and physically represented in a machine. This would make the AIs into properly human minds, possibly alleviating a lot of problems.

5 key factors:

- The reliability of AI predictions.
- Whether there will be a single dominant AI or a plethora of entities.
- How intelligent AIs will become.
- Whether extremely intelligent AIs can be controlled, and how.
- Whether whole brain emulations (human minds in computer form) will arrive before true AIs.

12. Future Bad Global Governance

There are two main divisions in governance disasters: failing to solve major solvable problems, and actively causing worse outcomes. An example of the first would be failing to alleviate absolute poverty; of the second, constructing a global totalitarian state. Technology, political and social change may enable the construction of new forms of governance, which may be either much better or much worse.

Two issues with governance disasters are first, the difficulty of estimating their probability, and second, the dependence of the impact of these disasters on subjective comparative evaluations: it is not impartially obvious how to rank continued poverty and global totalitarianism against billions of casualties or civilisation collapse.

5 key factors:

- How the severity of non-deadly policy failures can be compared with potential casualties.
- Whether poor governance will result in a collapse of the world system.
- How mass surveillance and other technological innovations will affect governance.
- Whether there will be new systems of governance in the future.
- Whether a world dictatorship may end up being constructed.

Full Report:

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