Great question. I think there are strong reasons for anticipating the total number of apocalyptic terrorists and ecoterrorists to nontrivially increase in the future. I’ve written two papers on the former, linked below. There’s weaker evidence to suggest that environmental instability will exacerbate conflicts in general, and consequently produce more malicious agents with idiosyncratic motives. As for the others—not sure! I suspect we’ll have at least one superintelligence around by the end of the century.
I think that number of agents will also grow as technologies will be more accessible for smaller organisations and even individuals. If a teenager could create dangerous biovirus as simply as he now able to write computer virus to amuse his friends, we are certainly doomed.
What do you think about how the number of potentially dangerous agents change in time?
Great question. I think there are strong reasons for anticipating the total number of apocalyptic terrorists and ecoterrorists to nontrivially increase in the future. I’ve written two papers on the former, linked below. There’s weaker evidence to suggest that environmental instability will exacerbate conflicts in general, and consequently produce more malicious agents with idiosyncratic motives. As for the others—not sure! I suspect we’ll have at least one superintelligence around by the end of the century.
I think that number of agents will also grow as technologies will be more accessible for smaller organisations and even individuals. If a teenager could create dangerous biovirus as simply as he now able to write computer virus to amuse his friends, we are certainly doomed.