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Quantitative Estimates of AI Risk
This page is in an early draft. It is very incomplete and may contain errors.
Some people who are working in AI Safety have published quantitative estimates for how likely they think it is that AI will pose an existential threat.
Background
Many thinkers believe advanced artificial intelligence (AI) poses a large threat to humanity's long term survival or flourishing. Here we review their quantitative estimates.
For quotes from specific prominent people working on AI, see this page. For expert surveys about AI risk, see this page, and for public surveys about AI risk, see this page.
This page draws heavily from this database made by Michael Aird at Convergence Analysis.
Quantitative Estimates
The table below includes estimates from individuals working in AI Safety of how likely very bad outcomes due to AI are.
Many of the individuals expressed Knightian uncertainty when making their estimates, saying that their probability varies day-to-day, or that the estimate is currently in development, or that this is a very quick-and-dirty estimate. People who have explicitly said something like this include Katja Grace, Joe Carlsmith, Peter Wildeford, Nate Soares, Paul Christiano, and others. These estimates should not be treated as definitive statements of these individuals' beliefs, but rather as glimpses of their thinking at that moment.
Each estimate includes:
- The person making the estimate.
- The year the estimate was made.
- What exactly is being estimated. Different people have different explanation of what “very bad” looks like, and some people have given multiple conditional estimates.
- The estimate the individual gives for the probability that AI development causes a very bad outcome.
- The source for this estimate.
The estimates are in no particular order. The table can be sorted by clicking at the top of each column.
| Estimator | Date | What is Estimated? | Probability | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Katja Grace | 2023 | Bad future because AI agents with bad goals control cognitive labor | 0.19 | Will AI end everything? A guide to guessing |
| Joe Carlsmith | 2021 | Existential catastrophe by 2070 from advanced, planning, strategic AI | 0.05 | Is Power-Seeking AI an Existential Risk? |
| Joe Carlsmith | 2022 | Existential catastrophe by 2070 from advanced, planning, strategic AI | 0.1+ | Update to: Is Power-Seeking AI an Existential Risk? |
| Nate Soares | 2021 | Existential catastrophe by 2070 from advanced, planning, strategic AI | 0.77 | Comments on Carlsmith's "Is power-seeking AI an existential risk?" |
| Toby Ord | 2020 | Existential catastrophe by 2120 as a result of unaligned AI | 0.1 | The Precipice |
| Toby Ord | 2020 | Humanity does not survive and is in charge of our future, if something that is more intelligent than us is created this century | 0.2 | Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures |
| Eliezer Yudkowsky | 2022 | AGI "killing literally everyone" | ~1 | AGI Ruin: A List of Lethalities |
| Rohin Shah | 2019 | Things with AI do not go well, without additional intervention by long-termist community doing safety research | 0.1 | Conversation with Rohin Shah |
| Paul Christiano | 2019 | How much worse the future is in expectation by virtue of our failure to align AI | 0.1 | Conversation with Paul Christiano |
| Peter Wildeford | 2023 | X-risk, including several scenarios | 0.22 | Slack channel & private conversation |
| Adam Gleave | 2019 | Chance that AI does cause a significant risk of harm, without intervention from AI safety efforts | 0.6 - 0.7 | Conversation with Adam Gleave |
| Adam Gleave | 2019 | Chance that AI does cause a significant risk of harm, with median AI safety efforts | 0.3 - 0.4 | Conversation with Adam Gleave |
| Adam Gleave | 2019 | Chance that AI does cause a significant risk of harm, with best case AI safety efforts | 0.1 - 0.2 | Conversation with Adam Gleave |
| Rohin Shah | 2020 | Probability of AI-induced existential risk | 0.05 | AI Alignment Podcast: An Overview of Technical AI Alignment in 2018 and 2019 with Buck Shlegeris and Rohin Shah |
| Buck Shlegeris | 2020 | Probability of AI-induced existential risk | 0.5 | AI Alignment Podcast: An Overview of Technical AI Alignment in 2018 and 2019 with Buck Shlegeris and Rohin Shah |
| James Fodor | 2020 | Unaligned AI usurps and establishes permanent dominance over humanity | 0.0005 | Critical Review of 'The Precipice': A Reassessment of the Risks of AI and Pandemics |
| Buck Shlegeris | 2023 | Likelihood of AI coup | 0.25 | The current alignment plan, and how we might improve it |
| Stuart Armstrong | 2014 | Probability of humanity's non-survival in the context of artificial superintelligence | 0.33 - 0.5 | The future is going to be wonderful if we don't get whacked |
| Stuart Armstrong | 2020 | Whether AGI could threaten humanity's survival or permanently curtail its potential | 0.05 - 0.3 | Is AI an existential threat? We don't know, and we should work on it |
| Rohin Shah | 2021 | Chance of human extinction if literally no one tries to address problems with AI | 0.33 - 0.7 | Rohin Shah on the State of AGI Safety Research in 2021 |
| Eli Lifland | 2022 | Misaligned takeover this century | 0.35 | My take on What We Owe the Future |
Primary author: Jeffrey Heninger
