Philosophical Considerations Relevant to Valuing Continued Human Survival: Conceptual Analysis, Population Axiology, and Decision Theory

Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)

GPI Working Paper No. 9-2023

PDF download

Many think that human extinction would be a catastrophic tragedy, and that we ought to do more to reduce extinction risk. There is less agreement on exactly why. If some catastrophe were to kill everyone, that would obviously be horrific. Still, many think the deaths of billions of people don’t exhaust what would be so terrible about extinction. After all, we can be confident that billions of people are going to die – many horribly and before their time - if humanity does not go extinct. The key difference seems to be that they will be survived by others. What’s the importance of that?

Other working papers

The Shutdown Problem: An AI Engineering Puzzle for Decision Theorists – Elliott Thornley (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)

I explain and motivate the shutdown problem: the problem of designing artificial agents that (1) shut down when a shutdown button is pressed, (2) don’t try to prevent or cause the pressing of the shutdown button, and (3) otherwise pursue goals competently. I prove three theorems that make the difficulty precise. These theorems suggest that agents satisfying some innocuous-seeming conditions will often try to prevent or cause the pressing of the shutdown button, even in cases where it’s costly to do so. I end by noting that…

Will AI Avoid Exploitation? – Adam Bales (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)

A simple argument suggests that we can fruitfully model advanced AI systems using expected utility theory. According to this argument, an agent will need to act as if maximising expected utility if they’re to avoid exploitation. Insofar as we should expect advanced AI to avoid exploitation, it follows that we should expected advanced AI to act as if maximising expected utility. I spell out this argument more carefully and demonstrate that it fails, but show that the manner of its failure is instructive…

Three mistakes in the moral mathematics of existential risk – David Thorstad (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)

Longtermists have recently argued that it is overwhelmingly important to do what we can to mitigate existential risks to humanity. I consider three mistakes that are often made in calculating the value of existential risk mitigation: focusing on cumulative risk rather than period risk; ignoring background risk; and neglecting population dynamics. I show how correcting these mistakes pushes the value of existential risk mitigation substantially below leading estimates, potentially low enough to…