Existential Risk and Public Policy

Abstract

In the past two decades, a growing number of philosophers as well as natural and social scientists have studied issues surrounding the idea of existential risk, which refers to a risk that threatens the destruction of humanity’s potential for development by annihilating the human race or in any other ways. Existential risks fall into two broad categories: the first is a set of natural risks ranging from supervolcanoes to asteroids and comets; the second is a group of various anthropogenic risks including nuclear weapons, climate change, misused biotechnology and nanotechnology, lethal autonomous weapon systems, and unaligned artificial superinteligence. Considering that if these hazards are successfully avoided, humanity will expectedly flourish for hundreds of million years, an attempt to eliminate the hazards holds tremendous value. As the well-functioning system of public policy is essential in effectively decreasing existential risks, the risks deserve careful scrutiny in policy analysis. Nonetheless, few studies on risks of this kind have been made by Japanese policy researchers. The current paper aims to fill this large gap in the literature by addressing questions of existential risks from the viewpoint of policy analysis.

This paper begins by noting that it has enormous value to even slightly reduce the probability of an existential catastrophe and then sets forth the purpose of discussing policy analytic issues raised by existential risks. Next, definitions of existential risk provided by leading theorists are examined, and a new definition is proposed. We also assess a system of risk classes proposed in the literature, under one of which existential hazards come, and offer an alternative system. Then, possible catastrophes in three categories are briefly reviewed: natural risks, risks posed by existing technologies, and risks predictably entailed by near-future technologies. Utilizing theoretical and empirical observations made so far in the study of existential hazards, we discuss three topics in policy study: the impossibility of policy feedback, doubtful relevance of social discount rate, and usefulness of inverse cost benefit analysis. The paper concludes with the emphasis on need for further policy analytic studies on existential risks.