I would also add Doomsday blackmailers. These are rational agents which would create Doomsday Machine to blackmail the world with the goal of world domination.
Another option worth considering is arogant scientists, who benefit personally from dangerous experiments. Example is CERN proceeded with LHC before its safety was proven. Another group of bioscientists excavated 1918 pandemic flu, sequenced it and posted it in the internet. And another scientist deliberately created new superflu studying genetic variation which could make birds flu stronger.
We could imagine a scientist who would to increase personal longevity by gene therapy, even if it poses 1 per cent pandemic risk. And if there are many of them...
Also there is a possible class of agents who try to create smaller catastrophe in order to prevent larger catastrophe. Recent movie “Inferno” is about it, where a character created a virus to kill half humanity to safe all humanity later.
I would also add Doomsday blackmailers. These are rational agents which would create Doomsday Machine to blackmail the world with the goal of world domination.
Another option worth considering is arogant scientists, who benefit personally from dangerous experiments. Example is CERN proceeded with LHC before its safety was proven. Another group of bioscientists excavated 1918 pandemic flu, sequenced it and posted it in the internet. And another scientist deliberately created new superflu studying genetic variation which could make birds flu stronger. We could imagine a scientist who would to increase personal longevity by gene therapy, even if it poses 1 per cent pandemic risk. And if there are many of them...
Also there is a possible class of agents who try to create smaller catastrophe in order to prevent larger catastrophe. Recent movie “Inferno” is about it, where a character created a virus to kill half humanity to safe all humanity later.
I listed all my ideas in my agent map, which is here on Less Wrong http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/o0m/the_map_of_agents_which_may_create_xrisks/