Planetary Boundaries and Global Catastrophic Risk

by | 20 October 2014

Download PDF

This article, published by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, summarizes the GCRI paper Integrating the planetary boundaries and global catastrophic risk paradigms.

The article begins as follows:

Handoh and I share an interest in taking a big-picture perspective on human-environment interactions. I first learned of his work from his paper On the timescales of sustainability and futurability, which criticizes traditional sustainability research for focusing on the next 100 years and falls for research using time scales of at least several centuries and possibly much longer. I completely agree with this. Indeed, I also emphasize very long time scales for sustainability, for example in my paper Adaptation to and recovery from global catastrophe.

It was with this big-picture perspective that led Handoh and I to discuss the planetary boundaries (PBs) and global catastrophic risk (GCR) paradigms. PBs research comes from the Earth system science research community and follows in the tradition of global-scale human-environment research like that in The Limits to Growth. GCR research comes from a mix of economics, ethics, risk analysis, and a few assorted other fields.

Handoh and I saw that PBs and GCR were different but complementary conceptual frameworks. So, we set about integrating them into a new framework, which we now call Boundary Risk for Humanity and Nature, or BRIHN, which is in part in honor of Handoh’s group RIHN where we did the preliminary work.

The remainder of the article is available in PDF archive.

Image credit:


This blog post was published on 17 April 2024 as part of a website overhaul and backdated to reflect the time of the publication of the work referenced here.

Author

Recent Publications

Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Global Catastrophic Risk

Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Global Catastrophic Risk

Is climate change a global catastrophic risk? This paper, published in the journal Futures, addresses the question by examining the definition of global catastrophic risk and by comparing climate change to another severe global risk, nuclear winter. The paper concludes that yes, climate change is a global catastrophic risk, and potentially a significant one.

Assessing the Risk of Takeover Catastrophe from Large Language Models

Assessing the Risk of Takeover Catastrophe from Large Language Models

For over 50 years, experts have worried about the risk of AI taking over the world and killing everyone. The concern had always been about hypothetical future AI systems—until recent LLMs emerged. This paper, published in the journal Risk Analysis, assesses how close LLMs are to having the capabilities needed to cause takeover catastrophe.

On the Intrinsic Value of Diversity

On the Intrinsic Value of Diversity

Diversity is a major ethics concept, but it is remarkably understudied. This paper, published in the journal Inquiry, presents a foundational study of the ethics of diversity. It adapts ideas about biodiversity and sociodiversity to the overall category of diversity. It also presents three new thought experiments, with implications for AI ethics.

Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Global Catastrophic Risk

Climate Change, Uncertainty, and Global Catastrophic Risk

Is climate change a global catastrophic risk? This paper, published in the journal Futures, addresses the question by examining the definition of global catastrophic risk and by comparing climate change to another severe global risk, nuclear winter. The paper concludes that yes, climate change is a global catastrophic risk, and potentially a significant one.

Assessing the Risk of Takeover Catastrophe from Large Language Models

Assessing the Risk of Takeover Catastrophe from Large Language Models

For over 50 years, experts have worried about the risk of AI taking over the world and killing everyone. The concern had always been about hypothetical future AI systems—until recent LLMs emerged. This paper, published in the journal Risk Analysis, assesses how close LLMs are to having the capabilities needed to cause takeover catastrophe.

On the Intrinsic Value of Diversity

On the Intrinsic Value of Diversity

Diversity is a major ethics concept, but it is remarkably understudied. This paper, published in the journal Inquiry, presents a foundational study of the ethics of diversity. It adapts ideas about biodiversity and sociodiversity to the overall category of diversity. It also presents three new thought experiments, with implications for AI ethics.