The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity

by Toby Ord

humanity’s attention is scarce and precious, and must not be wasted on flawed narratives or ideas

The most prominent advocate of this view, Paul Ehrlich, painted an apocalyptic vision of the near future: “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born.”93 This catastrophe would come soon and pose a direct existential risk. Ehrlich predicted: “Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come—and by ‘the end’ I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.”94 These confident predictions of doom were thoroughly mistaken. Instead of rising to unprecedented heights, the prevalence of famine dramatically declined. Less than a quarter as many people died of famine in the 1970s as in the 1960s, and the rate has since halved again.95 Instead of dwindling to a point of crisis, the amount of food per person has steadily risen over the last fifty years.

The world’s best Go players had long thought that their play was close to perfection, so were shocked to find themselves beaten so decisively.80 As the reigning world champion, Ke Jie, put it: “After humanity spent thousands of years improving our tactics, computers tell us that humans are completely wrong… I would go as far as to say not a single human has touched the edge of the truth of Go.”81