AT Offsets CP Supplement - Michigan 7 2023 BEJJP

Answers---Innovation
Innovation Bad---2AC
Innovation accelerates existential risk creation---each spikes the odds of mitigation failure
Marko Kovic 21, co-founder president of the nonprofit think tank ZIPAR (Zurich Institute of Public Affairs Research) and the co-founder and CEO of the consulting firm ars cognitionis, “Risks of Space Colonization,” Futures, vol. 126, 02/01/2021, p. 102638
3.4 Speeding up the rate of catastrophic risk creation
Similarly to the risk of speeding up the rate of existential risk creation described in subsection 3.2, an increased pace of technological development might result in an increased pace of catastrophic risk creation. This is unsurprising insofar as existential risks can correlate with existential ones. For example, the artificial intelligence family of technologies has created the existential risk of uncontrollable superintelligence, but it has also created catastrophic risks such as unprecedented cybersecurity risks [26] or the prospect of autonomous weapons systems [27]. An increased pace of catastrophic risk creation is a concern for the same reason as an increased pace in existential risk creation is: The more such risks exist, the more difficult it might be for humankind to adequately mitigate them in time.
Each new category is existential
Nathan Alexander Sears 21, PhD Candidate in Political Science at The University of Toronto, was a Professor of International Relations at the Universidad de Las Américas, Quito, “International Politics in the Age of Existential Threats,” Journal of Global Security Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, 03/01/2021, p. ogaa027
This section turns to an empirical analysis of the forces of destruction, based on evidence from four cases of anthropogenic existential threats: nuclear war, climate change, bioengineered pathogens, and artificial intelligence. The analysis identifies three empirical trends in the evolution of the forces of destruction (see table 2). First, there are now three modes of human agency that constitute the threat of physical destruction: violence between human actors, destruction of the natural environment, and loss of control over technology. Second, the scale of physical destruction has reached the critical point at which it becomes an existential threat to human civilization and survival—the forces of destruction have become “total.” Third, the diffusion of technology has made it so nationstates no longer possess a monopoly over the forces of destruction—non-state actors have become potential “agents of destruction.”
Modes of Destruction
The first variable—the modes of destruction—concerns the kinds of human agency that constitute the threat of physical destruction. There are essentially three modes of destruction behind anthropogenic existential [[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]] threats. While each represents a distinct form of human agency, all are instances of humanity’s capacity for self-destruction, and all are relevant for understanding the forces of destruction (see figure 1).
The first mode of destruction is violence between humans, which makes possible the threat of omnicide. This could take the form of violence by states (e.g., nuclear war) or non-state actors (e.g., bioterrorism). Arguably, the prospect of omnicidal violence is best captured by the threat of nuclear war. Since the dawn of the “nuclear revolution,”8 humans have maintained nuclear peace through a “balance of terror” between nation-states (Wohlstetter 1959). For Bernard Brodie (1959, 180), “deterrence is simply the effort to erect appropriate disincentives to counteract the incentives which the opponent feels for our destruction.” In a thermonuclear world, deterrence is based on the expectation that the outcome of nuclear war would be “mutual assured destruction” (MAD). In operational terms, nuclear deterrence relies on both sides possessing a secure and credible retaliatory nuclear capability (“second strike”) after having already been struck by a preemptive nuclear attack (“first strike”) (Brodie 1959; Wohlstetter 1959; Jervis 1989; Waltz 1990).
However, a combination of factors could erode the stability of nuclear deterrence, including the changing balance of power (e.g., US hegemonic decline, the resurgence of Russia, and the rise of China); deterioration of nuclear arms control (e.g., the demise of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, and uncertain future of the New START Agreement); the shift in military doctrines towards lower nuclear thresholds against conventional military force (e.g., Russia’s “escalate-to-de-escalate” doctrine, and the US 2018 Nuclear Posture Review); the sanguine rhetoric by some political leaders about nuclear weapons that undermine the “nuclear taboo” (Tannenwald 2018); and military-technological changes that could make states more vulnerable to a “disarming” first-strike (e.g., cyber and space capabilities, precision-strike and hypersonic missiles, and kinetic or direct-energy ballistic missile defence) (Gartzke and Lindsay 2017; Lieber and Press 2017; Miller and Fontaine 2017; Acton 2018). Nuclear war could always occur by accident or miscalculation (Blair and Kendall 1990). The danger is most obvious in an international crisis, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union narrowly avoided nuclear war; or the escalation of tensions between the United States and North Korea in 2017, when North Korea conducted ballistic missile and nuclear tests and US President Donald Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on Pyongyang. There has also been a long list of “close-calls” with nuclear weapons because of human and technical vulnerabilities in nuclear command-and-control, including cases where preparations were made for nuclear war due to a malfunctioning computer chip, or early-warning systems misinterpreting natural phenomenon as incoming missile attacks (Blair 1985; Sagan 1995; Schlosser 2013).
The second mode is human destruction of the natural environment, which could leave the planet uninhabitable for humanity (Ward 2008; Brannen 2017; Steffen et al. 2018; Spratt and Dunlop 2019; Wallace-Wells 2019; Ripple et al. 2020). Humans have become the driving force behind environmental change, which is why this geological epoch is increasingly called “the Anthropocene” (Crutzen 2002), to distinguish it from the unusually temperate period since the end of the last Ice Age roughly 11,700 years ago, the Holocene, when human civilization—probably not coincidentally—began and flourished (Steffen, Crutzen, and McNeill 2007).9 The decline of some of Earth’s environmental subsystems already exceeds the “planetary boundaries” believed to constitute a “safe operating space for humanity” (e.g., climate change, biodiversity loss, and the nitrogen cycle), while others are under serious strain (e.g., ocean acidification and the phosphorus cycle). The outcome of human-driven environmental decline could be “irreversible and, in some cases, abrupt environmental change, leading to a state less conducive to human development” (Rockstrom et al. 2009, 472). The species extinction crisis—what some are calling the “sixth mass extinction” (Kolbert 2014; Brannen 2017)—is a sign of Earth’s declining habitability in the Anthropocene.10
The biggest environmental danger may be climate change (or “global warming”). The major anthropogenic drivers of climate change are the burning of fossil fuels (e.g., coal, oil, and gas), combined with deforestation for agriculture (e.g., livestock and monocultures) and resource extraction (e.g., mining and oil), plus ocean warming undermining the planet’s capacity for absorbing carbon dioxide. Anthropogenic climate change could soon pass certain “tipping points,” whereby positive feedback loops in Earth’s climate system could lead to potentially irreversible and self-reinforcing “runaway” global warming (Kump, Kasting, and Crane 2003; Steffen et al. 2018). For example, the melting of Arctic “permafrost” could produce additional warming, as glacial retreat reduces the refractory effect of the ice and releases huge quantities of methane currently trapped beneath it. Earth could then move towards a “Hothouse Earth” climate, which would make the planet a less-hospitable place for humanity (Steffen et al. 2018; Spratt and Dunlop 2019; Wallace-Wells 2019; Ripple et al. 2020).
The third mode is human development of technology, which engenders the risk of loss of control over a singularly powerful technology (Moravec 1988; Vinge 1993; Bostrom 2014; Shanahan 2015; Danzig 2018; Tegmark 2018; Russell 2019). Bostrom (2013, 25) succinctly describes the risk: “If we continually sample from the urn of possible technological discoveries . . . then we risk eventually drawing a black ball: an easy-to-make intervention that causes extremely widespread harm and against which effective defense is infeasible.” Several emerging technologies pose a loss-of-control risk, including biotechnology (e.g., the “CRISPR revolution” could give humans the power over evolution to “rewrite the code of life,” including “gene-editing” of the human germ line or large-scale “gene-drives” in nature) (Doudna and Sternberg 2017); nanotechnology (e.g., the so-called “grey goo” scenario, whereby self-replicating nanotechnology could proliferate exponentially and uncontrollably until the entire biosphere is converted into nanomachines) (Drexler 2006); and artificial intelligence (e.g., the possibility of artificial “superintelligence”)
Perhaps AI best captures the threat of technological loss of control. Artificial intelligence is broadly defined as digital technologies or computers “that are capable of performing tasks commonly thought to require intelligence” (Brundage et al. 2018, 9). Currently, progress in AI is being driven by a combination of gains in hardware (e.g., the exponential growth in computing power described by “Moore’s Law”), software (e.g., “machine learning” algorithms and techniques, such as “neural networks” and “deep learning”), and data (e.g., the abundance of digital information on the Internet) (Bostrom 2014). Today’s AI are “narrow” systems that can achieve or surpass human-level intelligence only in specific domains—as demonstrated in November 2017, when “AlphaGo” beat the world champion, Ke Jie, at the strategy game “Go.” The idea that computers could one day possess human-level “general” intelligence was first suggested by none other than Alan Turing, who described a test—the “Turing Test”—in which a computer would successfully persuade a human observer that it was human. Since then, AI experts have frequently expressed the concern that AI could one day far surpass human beings in general intelligence—i.e., “superintelligence” (Good 1966; Moravec 1988; Vinge 1993; Kurzweil 2006; Bostrom 2014; Shanahan 2015; Tegmark 2018; Russell 2019). In one scenario, an AI system pursues the goal of optimizing its own algorithm, which becomes an accelerating process of self-recurring improvements—an “intelligence explosion”—that approaches a near-vertical ascent in capabilities—the “singularity.” The essence of the “control problem” is about figuring out how to properly align the goals of AI with humanity before an “intelligence explosion”; for once superintelligence exists it could become impossible for humans to control (Bostrom 2014; Shanahan 2015; Tegmark 2018; Russell 2019).
Innovation Bad---1AR
Every new invention risks causing extinction.
Toby Ord 20, Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Oxford University, “5. Future Risks,” The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, First edition, Hachette Books, 2020, pp. 121–158
UNFORESEEN RISKS
Imagine if the scientific establishment of 1930 had been asked to compile a list of the existential risks humanity would face over the following hundred years. They would have missed most of the risks covered in this book—especially the anthropogenic risks.137 Some would have been on the edge of their awareness, while others would come as complete shocks. How much risk lies beyond the limits of our own vision?
We can get some inkling by considering that there has been no slow-down in the rate at which we’ve been discovering risks, nor the rate at which we’ve been producing them. It is thus likely we will face unforeseen risks over the next hundred years and beyond. Since humanity’s power is still rapidly growing, we shouldn’t be surprised if some of these novel threats pose a substantial amount of risk.
One might wonder what good can come of considering risks so far beyond our sight. While we cannot directly work on them, they may still be lowered through our broader efforts to create a world that takes its future seriously. Unforeseen risks are thus important to understanding the relative value of broad versus narrowly targeted efforts. And they are important for estimating the total risk we face.
Nick Bostrom has recently pointed to an important class of unforeseen risk.138 Every year as we invent new technologies, we may have a chance of stumbling across something that offers the destructive power of the atomic bomb or a deadly pandemic, but which turns out to be easy to produce from everyday materials. Discovering even one such technology might be enough to make the continued existence of human civilization impossible.
Even if a single technology can’t cause extinction---the accumulation of seemingly benign innovations is an existential risk.
David Manheim 20, Research Fellow at the Foresight Institute, specializing in Global Catastrophic Risk Policy, “The Fragile World Hypothesis: Complexity, Fragility, and Systemic Existential Risk,” Futures, vol. 122, 09/01/2020, p. 102570
2. Novel Technologies Reframed as an Explore/Exploit tradeoff
Bostrom's recent “Vulnerable World Hypothesis” lists several ways in which “there is some level of technological development at which civilization almost certainly gets devastated by default, i.e. unless it has exited the 'semi-anarchic default condition.”’ He illustrates this with an analogy modeled on a classic type of explanation in probability theory, that of an urn from which we draw balls. In his analogy, each ball represents a technological advance, and the balls can be white, black, or any shade of gray – representing the impact on humanity. Since we do not know what the future of technology will bring, the distribution of the colors of the balls inside the urn is unknown. He then discusses four scenarios which posit the existence of a “black ball” technology drawn from the urn, which, unlike those found so far with positive effects or mixed effects of humanity, “invariably or by default destroys the civilization that invents it.”
Bostrom admits that his analogy to an urn is simplistic, though it is compelling. However, for our argument it is insufficient. Instead of an urn containing discrete technologies, the process of scientific discovery that occurs when certain advances pose risks can be understood with a different parallel from probability theory, one more often used in machine learning, that of the explore-exploit tradeoff. To explain this, we can consider the multi-armed bandit problem, where a gambler possesses some finite number of coins, and is faced with a row of slot machines, each of which has a potentially different payout distribution. For each coin, the gambler is faced with a choice of which machine to play. A conservative gambler might “explore” a bit and try a few machines, and notice a machine that pays out 2:1 just over half the time, and stay there to “exploit” the machine, slowly but steadily making money, uninterested in further exploration. A more adventurous gambler would instead spend more time exploring the other machines, perhaps seeking a machine that pays out less often, but with a far higher reward. If no such machine exists, they lose out from their continued exploration - but if there is a machine they find which pays out, say, 50:1 25% of the time, they will make far more money.
Explore-exploit tradeoffs are also discussed in somewhat different terms in machine learning, by analogy to a landscape, rather than an urn or a multi-armed bandit. Here, imagine a robot, which in our analogy will parallel human civilization, in a potentially dangerous environment. There are rewards, that is, new technologies, scattered about. At each stage, the robot can explore in any direction to search the landscape for a new reward (novel technologies), or focus on places where it knows rewards can be found. Because the payoffs of future exploration are unknown, optimal decision making in explore-exploit situations is notoriously hard to analyze. In fact, when the multi-armed bandit problem was first proposed during World War II, allied analysts suggested that perhaps the most useful application was to give the problem to the Axis, so that they would also waste their time on the seemingly intractable problem.Gittins (1979)
Unlike the gambler, whose worst outcome is sub-optimal returns on their investment, in our scenario we suppose that the robot might accidentally become trapped or be destroyed by some previously unknown danger. If Bostrom's hypothesis is correct, civilization's exploration of new technologies comes with some probability of a fatal result, and some probability of discovering a highly rewarding new technology. In this new context, the goal is to find a search strategy that maximizes the total benefit humanity ever receives, what Bostrom has called humanity's cosmic endowment. Bostrom (2003) Any strategy, however, risks what Bostrom called astronomical waste - either embracing “technological relinquishment,” by being so risk-averse that advanced technologies that greatly benefit humanity are never explored or developed, or being so risk-accepting that Bostrom's postulated Vulnerable World becomes inevitable, losing the entire potential future benefit to humanity. The first critical question addressed by Bostrom - “Is there a black ball in the urn of possible inventions?” is, to reframe the question, about the existence of fatal dangers in our Robot's exploration landscape. If we could answer that question in the negative, this would seem to refute the informal hypothesis he proposes of a vulnerable world. This is not the only refutation he suggests, however. Bostrom's suggestion of “differential technological development” is, in our terms, to cordon-off or minimize exploration of sections of the landscape or directions most likely to contain fatal traps. If this can be done, it would refute the suggestion that technological development inevitably leads to increased risk of choosing a devastating technology.
Falsifying Bostrom's initial hypothesis does not, however, show that the world is not vulnerable in other ways. The fuller statement of the hypothesis in Bostrom's paper is that “[i]f technological development continues then a set of capabilities will at some point be attained that make the devastation of civilization extremely likely, unless civilization sufficiently exits the semi-anarchic default condition.“ This statement, I will argue, cannot be falsified even by proving the impossibility of “a technology that invariably or by default destroys the civilization that invents it”1 . In addition to Bostrom's four vulnerable worlds, I suggest a fifth possibility - that the simple accumulation of white and/or gray balls drawn from the urn can itself lead to fragility and, without strong forces pushing in the opposite direction, collapse of civilization by default. To frame it in our explore/exploit terms, the fifth possibility is that as the robot explores, it may dig too deep, or alter the landscape itself incautiously so that further movement could cause a collapse. The primary way for this to happen which this paper discusses is fragility - in the analogy, our exploration could lead to the equivalent of an avalanche or mine-collapse brought on by i

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