1. society
2. unrest and war

Global Catastrophic Risks Prevention Plan
Plan А1
“Super UN”
2015
2020
2030
2040
2050
Research
Social support
UN role is
growing
Risk control
Creation of united worldwide
risk prevention authority
• Comprehensive list of risks
• Integration of different
approaches
• Probability assessment
• Prevention roadmap
• Cooperative scientific community
with shared knowledge
and low rivalry (CSER)
• Popularization (articles, books,
forums, media)
• Public support, street action
(аnti-nuclear protests in 80s)
• Political support (parties)
• All states in the world
contribute to the UN to fight
some global risks
• A smaller catastrophe could
help unite humanity (pandemic,
small asteroid, local nuclear war)
Technology bans
• International ban of dangerous technologies or
voluntary relinquishment
(like not creating new flu strains)
• Freezing potentially dangerous projects for 30 years
• Lowering international confrontation
Technology speedup
• Differential technological development: develop
safety and control technologies first (Bostrom)
• Laws and economic stimulus (Richard Posner, carbon
trade)
Surveillance
• International control systems (IAEA)
• Transparent society (David Brin)
Values
transformation
Elimination of certain risks
• Universal vaccines
• Asteroid detection (WISE)
• Public desire for life extension and
global security is growing
• Reduction of radical religious (ISIS) or
nationalistic values
• Popularity of transhumanism
Second half of the 21 century
• Worldwide video-surveillance
and control
• Center for quick response to any
emerging risk
• Peaceful unification of the planet based on
the system of international treates
Plan А2
Friendly AI
Plan А3
Rising
robustness
Plan А4
Space
• Study of Friendly AI theory
• Promotion of Friendly AI
(Bostrom and Yudkowsky)
• Fundraising (MIRI)
• Teaching rationality (LessWrong)
• Slowing other AI projects
(recruiting scientists)
Improving
sustainability of
civilization
• Intrinsically safe critical systems
• Growing diversity of human beings
and habitats
• Universal methods of prevention
(resistances structures,
strong medicine)
• War for world domination
• One country uses bioweapons to kill all
world’s population except its own which is
immunized
• Use of a super-technology (like nanotech)
to quickly gain global military dominance
• Blackmail by Doomsday Machine for world
domination
• Space stations as temporary
asylums (ISS)
• Cheap and safe launch systems
• Creation of space colonies on the
Moon and Mars (Elon Musk)
the catastrophe
Plan С
Preparation
• Fundraising and promotion
• Textbook to rebuild civilization
(Dartnell’s book “Knowledge”)
• Hoards with knowledge, seeds and
raw materials (Doomsday vault in
Norway)
• Survivalist communities
Time capsules
with information
Leave backups
• Underground storage
with information and DNA for future
non-human civilizations
• Eternal disks from Long Now
Fondation (or “M disks”)
Plan D
Saved by non-human
intelligence
Deus ex machina
Bad plans
• Maybe extraterrestrial are
looking for us and will save us
• Maybe we live in a simulation
and simulators will save us
• The Second Coming,
a miracle, or life after death
• Send radio messages in space
asking for help if a catastrophe is
enevitable
• Narrow AI
• Human emulations
• Value loading
Improvement of
human intelligence
and morality
needed to quickly pass
risk window
• Nootropics, brain stimulation, and gene
therapy for higher IQ
• Education, rationality, and fighting
cognitive biases
• High empathy for new geniuses
needed to prevent them from becoming
superterrorists
• Many rational, positive, and cooperative
people need to reduce x-risks
• Lower proportion of destructive beliefs,
risky behaviour, and selfishness
• Investment in super-technologies
(nanotech, biotech)
• High speed technical progress
helps to overcome slow
process of resource depletion
•
•
•
•
•
• Underground bunkers
• Remote islands
• Nuclear submarines
Messages to
ET civilizations
Quantum immortality
• If many world interpretation of QM is
true, an observer will survive any sorts
of death including any global catastrophe
(Moravec, Tegmark)
• It may be possible to make almost univocal correspondance between observer
survivor and survaval of a group of people
(e.g. if all are
in submarine)
• Another human civilizations must exist in
the infinite Universe
Prevent x-risk research
because it only increases risk
Controlled regression
• Keep secret dangerous
information and ideas from
terrorists
• Do not advertise the idea of
man-made global catastrophe
• Don’t try to control risks as it
only would rise them
• As we can’t measure probability of the global catastrophe
it maybe unresonable to try to
change it
• Use small catastrophe to prevent large
one (Willard Wells)
• Luddism (Kaczynski):
relinquishment of dangerous science
• Creation of ecological civilization without
technology (“World made by hand”, anarchoprimitivism)
• DLimitation of personal and
collective intelligence to prevent
dangerous science
• Exploring the Universe
Unfriendly AI
• Kills all people and maximizes non-human values
(paperclip maximiser)
• People are alive but suffer extensively
on highest possible level
•
•
•
•
Nanotech-based immortal body
Diversification of humanity into several successor species capable of living in space
Mind uploading
Integration with AI
AI based on uploading
of its creator
• Friendly to the value system of its creator
• Its values consistently evolve during its self-improvement
• Limited self-improvement may solve friendliness
problem
Interstellary distributed
humanity
• Many unconnected human civilizations
• New types of space risks (space wars, planets and stellar
explosions, AI and nanoreplicators, ET civilizations)
Rebuilding civilisation after catastrophe
• Rebuilding population
• Rebuilding science and technology
• Prevention of future catastrophes
Resurrection by
another civilization
• Mechanical life
• Preservation of information about
humanity for billions of years
• Safe narrow AI
Technological
precognition
• Prediction of the future based
on advanced quantum technology
and avoiding dangerous
world-lines
• Search for potential terrorists using
newscanning technologies
• Special AI to predict and
prevent new x-risks
Depopulation
• Could provide resourсe preservation
and make
control simplier
• Natural causes:
pandemics, war, hunger
(Malthus)
• Birth control (Bill Gates)
• Deliberate small
catastrophe (bio-weapons)
Manipulating of the
extinction probability
using
Doomsday argument
• Changing total future births
(method UN++ by Bostrom)
• Changing birth density to
get more time
Unfriendly AI maybe better
than nothing
• Any super AI will have some
memory about humanity
• It will use simulations of human
civilization to study the probability of
its own existance
• It may share some human
values and distribute them
through the Universe
Reboot of the civilization
• Several reboots may happen
• Finally there will be total collapse
or a new supercivilization level
Robots-replicators in space
• Create conditions for
appearance of new intelligent
life on Earth
• Directed panspermia
(Mars, Europe, space dust)
• Preservation of biodiversity
(apes, habitats)
Random strategy may help
us to escape some dangers
that killed all previous
civilizations in space
• Colonization of the Galaxy
Timely achievement of immortality
• “Orion” style nuclear generation ships with colonists
• Starships on new physical principles with immortal people on board
• Von Neumann self-replicating probes with human embryos
Crew training
Crews in bunkers
Crew rotation
Different types of asylums
Frozen embryos
Strange strategy
to escape
Fermi paradox
• Colonization of the solar system, interstellar travel
and Dyson spheres
Global
catastrophe
Interstellar travel
Preservation of
earthly life
• Interstellar radio messages
with encoded human DNA
• Hoards on the Moon,
frozen brains
• Voyager-style space сrafts with
information about humanity
• Wrong command makes shield system
attack people
• Geoengineering goes awry
• World totalitarianism leads to catastrophe
• Seed AI quickly improves itself and
undergoes “hard takeoff”
• It becomes dominant force on Earth
• AI eliminates suffering, involuntary death,
and existential risks
• AI Nanny – one hypothetical variant of super
AI that only acts to prevent
existential risks (Ben Goertzel)
Readiness
Building
Fatal mistakes in world control system
Creation of a small AI capable
of recursive self-improvement and based
on Friendly AI theory
Colonisation of the Solar system
• Self-sustaining colonies on Mars
and large asteroids
• Terraforming of planets and asteroids using
self-replicating robots
• Millions of independent colonies inside asteroids
and comet bodies in the Oort cloud
• “A world order in which there is a
single decision-making agency
at the highest level” (Bostrom)
• Super AI which prevents all possible risks and
provides immortality and happiness to humanity
Superintelligent AI
High-speed
tech development
Singleton
• Worldwide government system based on AI
Seed AI
AI practical studies
• Human values theory and decision theory
• Proven safe, fail-safe, intrinsically safe AI
• Preservation of the value system during
AI self-improvement
• A clear theory that is practical to implment
Temporary asylums in space
colonization
Plan В
Survive
Solid Friendly AI theory
• Geoengineering against global warming
• Worldwide missile defense and
anti-asteroid shield
• Nano-shield – distributed system of
control of hazardous replicators
• Bio-shield – worldwide immune system
• Merger of the state, Internet
and worldwide AI in uniform
monitoring, security and control system
• Isolation of risk sources a great distance
from Earth
Planet unification war
Global
catastrophe
Study and Promotion
Active shields
• Creation of a civilization which have a lot of common
values and traits with humans
• Resurrection of concrete people
Control on the simulation
(if we are in it)
• Live an interesting life so our
simulation isn’t switched off
• Dont let them know that we know
that we live in simulation
• Hack the simulation and
control it
• Negotiation with the simulators or
prey for help
Attracting good
outcome by
positive thinking
• Preventing negative
thoughts about the end of
the world and about
violence
• Maximum positive
attitude “to attract”
positive outcome
• Start parting now
Global
catastrophe
Plans A1-A4 represent best possible ways to prevent global catastrophe. These plans could be realized simultaniously
until late stages.
Plans B, С and D are subsequently worse and give only small chance of survival.
(c) Alexey Turchin, 2014