The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity

A book on existential risk: events that would destroy humanity's long-term potential, through extinction, an unrecoverable collapse of civilisation or a permanent dystopia. Ord argues that since the first atomic bomb test in 1945 humanity has lived through a period of unusually high risk, which he calls the Precipice. He first makes the moral case for caring about such risks, appealing to the present, to what we owe the past and to the vast number of future lives at stake. He then estimates the size of the risks. Natural threats such as asteroids, supervolcanoes and stellar explosions turn out to be small. The risks we create are far larger: nuclear war and climate change, and above all engineered pandemics and unaligned artificial intelligence. Ord puts the total chance of existential catastrophe this century at about one in six, while admitting the uncertainty of such figures. The last part sets out a strategy: reach existential security, take time for a 'long reflection', then realise humanity's potential.

It is the clearest single introduction to existential risk, combining moral argument with careful estimates, and it asks readers to treat the safety of the long-term future as a practical priority.