The term ‘global catastrophic risk’ (GCR) is increasingly used in the scholarly community to refer to a category of threats that are global in scope, catastrophic in intensity, and non-zero in probability (Bostrom and Cirkovic, 2008). [...] The GCR framework is concerned with low-probability, high-consequence scenarios that threaten humankind as a whole (Avin et al., 2018; Beck, 2009; Kuhlemann, 2018; Liu, 2018)
(Personally, I don’t think I like that second sentence. I’m not sure what “threaten humankind” is meant to mean, but I’m not sure I’d count something that e.g. causes huge casualties on just one continent, or 20% casualties spread globally, as threatening humankind. Or if I did, I’d be meaning something like “threatens some humans”, in which case I’d also count risks much smaller than GCRs. So this sentence sounds to me like it’s sort-of conflating GCRs with existential risks.)
Sears writes:
(Personally, I don’t think I like that second sentence. I’m not sure what “threaten humankind” is meant to mean, but I’m not sure I’d count something that e.g. causes huge casualties on just one continent, or 20% casualties spread globally, as threatening humankind. Or if I did, I’d be meaning something like “threatens some humans”, in which case I’d also count risks much smaller than GCRs. So this sentence sounds to me like it’s sort-of conflating GCRs with existential risks.)