The commission sorts threats into a pyramid with four categories, with the top category, threats with the potential to lead to human extinction by 2100, holding nuclear conflict with nuclear famine and the malicious use of AI, including bioweapons development. The panel, made up of 35 experts, evaluated hundreds of interconnected variables across 204 countries and territories to compile its list of threats it judges governments, funders and industry can realistically act on.
Crucially, the commission stresses that likelihood and consequence are separate questions. Its executive summary states that "although our primary metric is cumulative expected amenable burden, we do recognise that malicious use of AI, including bioweapons, and nuclear war with nuclear famine carry risks of extinction in the next 75 years." Forecasters who worked with the commission showed "wide divergence" in estimating the risk of AI-related catastrophe, and for both top-tier threats the commission relied on "structured qualitative methods where data are insufficient," rather than the quantitative forecasting used for other risks. Other potential extinction events, such as asteroid strikes and supervolcanoes, were excluded because their probability over the period was judged too low.
The scenarios themselves are stark. In a nuclear conflict, enough particles could be injected into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight and cause widespread famine, while AI systems could alternatively be used to engineer biological weapons. An accompanying Lancet editorial warned that the scale of harm, should these scenarios be realised, would inflict an apocalypse on humanity. In numerical terms, the commission's modelling found action to reduce the risk of malicious AI could avert an estimated 10.4 billion disability-adjusted life years by 2100, and action to prevent nuclear conflict an estimated 133 million deaths and 9.35 billion DALYs. CNN noted that the potential healthy years of life lost to malicious AI, about 10.4 billion worldwide by 2100, is roughly comparable to other risks including naturally occurring pandemics and obesity.
Beyond the two extinction-tier threats, the commission's wider list spans air pollution, antimicrobial resistance, childhood malnutrition, climate breakdown, conventional conflict, declining overseas aid, high alcohol consumption, high blood pressure, income inequality, low educational attainment, naturally occurring pandemics, obesity, poor mental health, smoking, and unhealthy ageing. Commission co-chair Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, said "decisions made by leaders today will shape the health and wellbeing of the next generation." Commission member Ibrahim Abubakar, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at UCL, said the assessment aims to give policymakers at global, multilateral and national levels a clear view of the threats they face and the difference proactive intervention can make.
The commission plans to update its findings annually, according to reporting on the Berlin launch. Its framing echoes concerns long raised in AI safety circles, including the 2023 Statement on AI Risk signed by hundreds of researchers, which held that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." What the Lancet commission adds is an attempt to place that concern on the same quantitative footing, DALYs lost by 2100, used across public health for decades to compare malaria, heart disease and malnutrition.
Go deeper: The Lancet's official release on the Commission's roadmap, FourWeekMBA's breakdown of the Commission's risk pyramid and methodology