What is existential security?

Abstract

In The Precipice, Toby Ord defines an existential risk as “a risk that threatens the destruction of humanity’s longterm potential”. This could involve extinction, an unrecoverable collapse, or an unrecoverable dystopia. (See also.). Ord uses the term existential security to refer to “a place of safety - a place where existential risk is low and stays low”. This doesn’t require reaching a state with zero existential risk per year. But it requires that existential risk per year either (a) indefinitely trends downwards (on average), or (b) is extremely low and roughly stable. This is because even a very low but stable risk per year can practically guarantee existential catastrophe happens at some point, given a long enough time. My own one-sentence description of existential security would therefore be: A state where the total existential risk across all time is low, such that humanity’s long-term potential is preserved and protected.