Course guide
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What You Will Need · How to Navigate · Syllabus
What You Will Need
You will need a copy of Toby Ord’s book:
Ord, Toby (2020). The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. London: Bloomsbury.
You will also need internet access and the ability to open links to readings, videos, and audio. No specific prior knowledge is assumed.
The Reference Shelf collects additional sources. These are separate from the required textbook.
How to Navigate
Use the sidebar to expand a module and select its introduction, a lesson, or a sublesson. On smaller screens, select Contents at the top of the page.
Use Previous and Next at the bottom of each page to move through the course. Readings, videos, and audio are linked or embedded within the lessons. After following an external link, use your browser’s Back button to return, or return to the course tab if the link opened a new tab.
The public course has no login, email registration, graded submissions, or semester deadlines. You can bookmark a lesson to return to it later.
Syllabus
Five modules cover Lessons 1–14 and their sublessons, totaling 87 lesson pages.
Module 1: Measuring and Managing Risks
- 1 Introduction to Normal Risks
- 1.1 Describing Risks
- 1.2 Risk Perception, Risk Attitudes, and Risk Management
- 1.3 Categories of Risk Management Strategies
- 1.4 Definition of Existential Risk
- 2 Risk Settings, Risk Preferences, and Strategies to Manage Risks
- 2.1 Risk and Loss Without Insurance
- 2.2 Insurance as Risk Reduction
- 2.3 Expected Value and Actuarial Fair Premiums
- 2.4 Risk Preferences and Expected Utility
- 2.5 Prevention: Self-Protection vs Self-Insurance
- 2.6 Saving as Risk Management Strategy
- 2.7 Information & Early Warning
- 2.8 Recovery
- 2.9 Managing Existential and Global Catastrophic Risks
Module 2: Assessment of Existential Risks
- 3 Foundations of Existential Risk
- 3.1 Arc of History: Humanity’s Progress & Power
- 3.2 The Anthropocene - Humanity’s Unique Era
- 3.3 Defining Existential Risk & Catastrophe
- 4 Ethics, Cultures, and Perspectives
- 4.1 An Introduction to Three Categories of Ethical Systems
- 4.2 Applying Ethics - Open Questions & Difficult Dilemmas
- 4.3 Ethics of Existential Risk
- 5 What Makes Managing Existential Risk Hard?
- 5.1 Public Goods and Externalities
- 5.2 Strategic Interactions, Prisoner's Dilemma and Game Theory
- 5.3 Public Goods and Racing Problems in Existential Risks
Module 3: Specific Existential Risks
- 6 Natural Risks
- 6.1 Asteroids & Comets
- 6.2 Supervolcanoes & Other Natural Risks
- 6.3 Estimates of Total Natural Existential Risk
- 6.4 Tools to Estimate Existential Risks
- 6.5 Aggregation Systems
- 7 Nuclear Risks
- 7.1 Risks of Developing Nuclear Weapons
- 7.2 Consequences of Nuclear War
- 7.3 Historical Close Calls
- 7.4 Trends and Risk Assessment
- 8 Climate Risks
- 8.1 Introduction to Climate Change
- 8.2 Sources of Climate Change Uncertainty
- 8.3 Climate Change as Existential Risk
- 8.4 Managing Climate Risk
- 9 Pandemics
- 9.1 Introduction to Infectious Diseases
- 9.1.1 What Are They? Types of Infectious Agents
- 9.1.2 What Do Infectious Agents “Want”?
- 9.1.3 Co-evolution of Animals and Infectious Diseases
- 9.1.4 Infectious Diseases as Weapons
- 9.2 Intro to and History of Pandemics
- 9.2.1 Pandemic and R₀
- 9.2.2 Historical Frequency and Sizing of Pandemics
- 9.2.3 Major Examples of Pandemics
- 9.2.4 Societal Responses to Pandemics
- 9.3 Pandemics in Modern World
- 9.3.1 Modern defenses against pandemics
- 9.3.2 Modern Threats of Pandemics
- 9.4 Pandemics and the Future
- 9.4.1 The Ability to Use Technology to Design Infectious Disease
- 9.4.2 Ability to Use Technology to Make New Medicine
- 9.4.3 New Tools for Pandemics as Strategic Weapons
Module 4: Existential Risk from AI
- 10 AI Landscape & Capabilities
- 10.1 Toby Ord's Perspective on AI Risk
- 10.2 Moore's Law
- 10.3 History: 10 Milestone Events in AI
- 10.4 Measuring AI Ability by Task Length
- 10.5 Thousands of Authors on Future of AI
- 11 AI Risk and Challenges
- 11.1 What Makes AI an Existential Risk?
- 11.1.1 Is AI Amazing or Terrible?
- 11.1.2 AI Risk: Misuse and Misalignment
- 11.1.3 What Experts Think
- 11.2 Challenges in Managing AI
- 11.2.1 Coordination & Racing Challenge
- 11.2.2 Externalities Problems from AI
- 11.2.3 Monitoring and Instrumental Convergence
- 12 Management of x-Risk from AI
- 12.1 AI x-Risk Management Strategies
- 12.2 AI 2027 Scenario
- 12.3 P-Doom Movie
- 12.4 Debates & Policy