Summary of threats facing humanity
I asked GPT-4 for a list of the most important threats to human civilization, their likelihood, and why they were considered threats.
GPT's output is also pasted into the comments.
I asked GPT-4 for a list of the most important threats to human civilization, their likelihood, and why they were considered threats.
GPT's output is also pasted into the comments.
Of these, I feel like climate change, a meteor, and nuclear war are really the only viable existential threats, and even climate change will most likely not destroy humanity wholly, although what's left may not be worth living in.
Yes to me even a 70% chance of it happening seems low. Seems to me like the probability of it is 100%
The idea is to start a discussion of what the accurate answer is
Well it means something. Maybe it doesn’t mean that it’s true, but it means something about what comes out.
I mostly assume this is what it’s read in a huge number of articles and blog posts.
It’s regurgitating it here. Like querying a big opinion pool, using questions as the query language. It’s just rewriting passages in its own words to cobble together a report on whatever I ask it, which is fine for my purposes.
I realize the percentages are probably just the percentages various people came up with, and that’s fine with me too.
My intention with the prompt here isn’t so much “predict the future” as it is “summarize current thinking”.
Like when I ask it to tell me organic chemistry. I know it’s just reporting what it read.
Absolutely:
Climate Change (70 - 80%):
Nuclear Warfare (5 - 10%):
Pandemics (40 - 50%):
Artificial Intelligence Misuse (20 - 30%):
Biodiversity Loss (60 - 70%):
Economic Collapse (20 - 25%):
Asteroid Impact (0.01 - 0.1%):
Geomagnetic Storms (10 - 15%):
Resource Depletion (40 - 50%):
Political Instability (30 - 40%):
.
It has drastically overstated the likelihood of a globally catastrophic impact from space.
A devastating regional impact is estimated to occur once every 10,000 to 100,000 years. Note that’s regional not global.
There has only been one of any significance in all of recorded history that I’m aware of, which fortunately took place in an uninhabited region of Siberia.
Search for Torino Scale if you’re interested in learning more about how they estimate and categorize these threats.