{"ID":2849699,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.23453","arxiv_id":"2510.23453","title":"What are the odds? Risk and uncertainty about AI existential risk","abstract":"This work is a commentary of the article \\href{https://doi.org/10.18716/ojs/phai/2025.2801}{AI Survival Stories: a Taxonomic Analysis of AI Existential Risk} by Cappelen, Goldstein, and Hawthorne. It is not just a commentary though, but a useful reminder of the philosophical limitations of \\say{linear} models of risk. The article will focus on the model employed by the authors: first, I discuss some differences between standard Swiss Cheese models and this one. I then argue that in a situation of epistemic indifference the probability of P(D) is higher than what one might first suggest, given the structural relationships between layers. I then distinguish between risk and uncertainty, and argue that any estimation of P(D) is structurally affected by two kinds of uncertainty: option uncertainty and state-space uncertainty. Incorporating these dimensions of uncertainty into our qualitative discussion on AI existential risk can provide a better understanding of the likeliness of P(D).","short_abstract":"This work is a commentary of the article \\href{https://doi.org/10.18716/ojs/phai/2025.2801}{AI Survival Stories: a Taxonomic Analysis of AI Existential Risk} by Cappelen, Goldstein, and Hawthorne. It is not just a commentary though, but a useful reminder of the philosophical limitations of \\say{linear} models of risk....","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.23453","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.23453v1","authors":"[\"Marco Grossi\"]","published":"2025-10-27T15:53:23Z","proceeding":"cs.AI","tasks":"[\"cs.AI\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}