Nick Bostrom's Philosophy Of Existential Risks

One of Bostrom’s earlier philosophies was his philosophy on existential risk. This philosophy described an important aspect of Bostrom’s concerns which would be the future of the human race. Here Nick Bostrom introduced the concept of an event or outcome that would annihilate Earth or significantly reduce the human race’s potential for growth on a global scale, basically sending us back into a primitive state due to the amount of destruction.
Nick Bostrom categories risks according to their intensity. For example, he considers risks that are world wide but endurable as global catastrophic risks. This means that humanity could still potentially recover from this. On the other hand he categorises risks that affect all future generations and
For example, instantaneous catastrophes that could be either deliberate or accidental are labeled as “bangs”. These would include nuclear warfare, a meteor colliding with the Earth, etc. “Crunches” are scenarios in which the human race survives, however, civilization is irreversibly changed for the worse. These would include, but are not limited to, global warming, and the exhaustion of natural resources. “Shrieks” are undesirable futures. These would include artificial intelligence technology becoming too advanced, thus dominating human civilization. The last category is “whimpers” which is the gradual decline of the current values of the human civilization. Nick Bostrom believes that this would happen by “evolution changing moral
There are two aspects to this philosophy. The first aspect is that with increasing technological advancements artificial intelligence will soon exceed the performance of humans in all domains. Bostrom stated that some components of computer already greatly surpass human performance in speed, “Biological neurons operate at a peak speed of about 200 Hz, a full seven orders of magnitude slower than a modern microprocessor (~2 GHz). Moreover, neurons in the human body transmit spike signals across axons at no greater than 120 m/s, whereas existing electronic processing cores can communicate optically at the speed of light." This shows that computers are already surpassing the ability of the human mind. Another advancement that Bostrom acknowledges that already exists is the ever expanding capacity of computers. The brain eventually begins to forget or lose memories, however, everything that is saved on a computer will remain there forever. Bostrom believes that in the near future artificial intelligence will surpass the ability of the human mind in the same manner that humans outperform chimpanzees.
The second aspect is that humans will be able to modify themselves to surpass the intelligence of even the smartest minds. Bostrom states that by combining the use of artificial selection, selective breeding to develop the best characteristics, and genetic modification, the direct manipulation of an organism’s genome, human