Engineering Existential Risks

A brief discussion of 50 years of philosophical effort to think about global existential risks places Toby Ord's "The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity" (2020) in context. This followed with a review of Ord, especially chapters 4 and 5, on risks directly dependent on engineering activities. These "anthropocenic risks" or "anthropogenic threats," include those dependent on nuclear engineering (weapons and power), climate change, environmental damage, geoengineering overreach, bioengineered pandemics, and artificial intelligence, but Ord fails to thematize the centrality of engineering. Threats involved can be either intended (from warfare, terrorism, and economic competition) or unintended consequences (side effects, secondary effects, dual-use, etc.). Engineers often present their work as solutions to these risks rather than as their causes. Balanced reflection nevertheless requires consideration of the risk-cost-benefits not just of particular engineering projects and processes but of engineering more generally. With regard to the analysis of threats, complementary analytic reflection can be found in recent work by philosopher of engineering Michael Davis's argument that engineers can responsibly "plan only as far into the future as they can reasonably expect engineers to be present."