A major consideration here is the use of AI to mitigate other x-risks. Some of Toby Ord’s x-risk estimates
I think Toby’s existential risk estimates are many orders of magnitude higher than warranted. I estimated an annual extinction risk of 5.93*10^-12 for nuclear wars, 2.20*10^-14 for asteroids and comets, 3.38*10^-14 for supervolcanoes, a prior of 6.36*10^-14 for wars, and a prior of 4.35*10^-15 for terrorist attacks. These values are already super low, but I believe existential risk would still be orders of magnitude lower. I think there would only be a 0.0513 % (= e^(-10^9/(132*10^6))) chance of a repetition of the last mass extinction 66 M years ago, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, being existential. I got my estimate assuming:
An exponential distribution with a mean of 132 M years (= 66*10^6*2) represents the time between i) human extinction in such catastrophe and ii) the evolution of an intelligent sentient species after such a catastrophe. I supposed this on the basis that:
Given the above, i) and ii) are equally likely. So the probability of an intelligent sentient species evolving after human extinction in such a catastrophe is 50 % (= 1⁄2).
Consequently, one should expect the time between i) and ii) to be 2 times (= 1⁄0.50) as long as that if there were no such catastrophes.
An intelligent sentient species has 1 billion years to evolve before the Earth becomes habitable.
Thanks for elaborating, Joseph!
I think Toby’s existential risk estimates are many orders of magnitude higher than warranted. I estimated an annual extinction risk of 5.93*10^-12 for nuclear wars, 2.20*10^-14 for asteroids and comets, 3.38*10^-14 for supervolcanoes, a prior of 6.36*10^-14 for wars, and a prior of 4.35*10^-15 for terrorist attacks. These values are already super low, but I believe existential risk would still be orders of magnitude lower. I think there would only be a 0.0513 % (= e^(-10^9/(132*10^6))) chance of a repetition of the last mass extinction 66 M years ago, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, being existential. I got my estimate assuming:
An exponential distribution with a mean of 132 M years (= 66*10^6*2) represents the time between i) human extinction in such catastrophe and ii) the evolution of an intelligent sentient species after such a catastrophe. I supposed this on the basis that:
An exponential distribution with a mean of 66 M years describes the time between:
2 consecutive such catastrophes.
i) and ii) if there are no such catastrophes.
Given the above, i) and ii) are equally likely. So the probability of an intelligent sentient species evolving after human extinction in such a catastrophe is 50 % (= 1⁄2).
Consequently, one should expect the time between i) and ii) to be 2 times (= 1⁄0.50) as long as that if there were no such catastrophes.
An intelligent sentient species has 1 billion years to evolve before the Earth becomes habitable.