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  "title": "Existential risk / x-risk",
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    "Coordinates and ranges summarize public positions. They are not probabilities, rankings, statistical intervals or measures of company safety.",
    "Preserve source attribution, publication precision, retrieval notes, counterpoints and caveats. A read source does not prove its claims true.",
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      "id": "claim-term-xrisk-1a5192ba3d7825ca26b24a72",
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      "text": "Risks of extinction or permanent loss of human potential, in Bostrom’s framework. Researchers disagree about definitions, value judgments and how such risks should be assessed.",
      "kind": "synthesis",
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      "text": "In Bostrom's formulation, risks that could eliminate humanity or permanently and drastically curtail its potential. Extinction is one case; not every serious harm is existential.",
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  "data": {
    "id": "xrisk",
    "short": "Existential risk",
    "term": "Existential risk / x-risk",
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    "group": "Ethics",
    "definition": "In Bostrom's formulation, risks that could eliminate humanity or permanently and drastically curtail its potential. Extinction is one case; not every serious harm is existential.",
    "summary": "Risks of extinction or permanent loss of human potential, in Bostrom’s framework. Researchers disagree about definitions, value judgments and how such risks should be assessed.",
    "placement": "Helps define the chart's concern axis. Its severity does not determine its probability.",
    "distinction": "A catastrophe can be devastating without being existential. Cremer and Kemp argue that risk research should distinguish factual analysis of possible extinction from ethical views about humanity’s future. Their criticism calls for broader methods and participation; it does not establish that extinction risks are absent.",
    "references": {
      "summary": [
        "existential-risks",
        "glossary-balance-risk-methodology"
      ],
      "definition": [
        "existential-risks"
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      "placement": [
        "existential-risks"
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        "glossary-balance-risk-methodology",
        "unesco-ethics"
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      "id": "existential-risks",
      "title": "Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards",
      "publisher": "Nick Bostrom",
      "url": "https://nickbostrom.com/papers/existential-risks/",
      "published": "2002",
      "checkedOn": "2026-09-15",
      "kind": "primary",
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      "notes": "Read the definition distinguishing existential from other risks. Does not establish the likelihood of a specific scenario."
    },
    {
      "id": "glossary-balance-risk-methodology",
      "title": "Democratising Risk: In Search of a Methodology to Study Existential Risk",
      "publisher": "Carla Zoe Cremer and Luke Kemp / arXiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11214",
      "published": "2021-12-27",
      "checkedOn": "2026-09-15",
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      "notes": "Read the abstract and submission history. The authors argue for clearer definitions, plural values and better risk methods. Their criticism of one influential framework is not a finding that all catastrophe research is invalid."
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      "id": "unesco-ethics",
      "title": "Ethics of Artificial Intelligence",
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      "url": "https://www.unesco.org/en/artificial-intelligence/recommendation-ethics",
      "published": null,
      "checkedOn": "2026-09-15",
      "kind": "primary",
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      "notes": "Read overview of rights, dignity, fairness and oversight. Recommendation adoption date is not assigned to the live page."
    }
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}