Global existential risks will hopefully not be a big part of the 2018-2023 period.

A hedged ('hopefully') prediction about events, judged at the end of 2023. A 'global existential risk' means an event that plausibly threatens human extinction or permanent collapse of civilisation: a nuclear exchange between major powers, an engineered or natural pandemic of that scale, uncontrolled AI catastrophe, an asteroid impact, and similar. Global catastrophes that are serious but not existential in scale do not count. True: no such event occurred or narrowly failed to occur between 2018 and 2023. Mostly true: none occurred, but existential risk became a prominent subject of major government policy or international action late in the period, e.g. official AI-extinction-risk summits or statements. Mixed: a near-miss widely judged to have come close to existential scale occurred (e.g. a credible imminent nuclear exchange). Mostly false: a large-scale event that was arguably existential-adjacent dominated the period. False: an event of existential scale actually occurred.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 PRESS RELEASE: Doomsday Clock set at 90 seconds to midnight Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists · 24 January 2023

   “90 seconds to midnight is the closest the Clock has ever been set to midnight, and it’s a decision our experts do not take lightly.”

2. E2 2023 Doomsday Clock Statement: Nuclear Risk - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists · 24 January 2023

   “Thinly veiled Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war constitute the worst nuclear development in 2022.”

3. E3 Countries agree to safe and responsible development of frontier AI in landmark Bletchley Declaration UK Government (GOV.UK) · 1 November 2023

   “The Declaration sets out agreement that there is “potential for serious, even catastrophic, harm, either deliberate or unintentional, stemming from the most significant capabilities of these AI models.””

4. E4 AI Extinction Statement Press Release | CAIS Center for AI Safety (CAIS) · 30 May 2023

   “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

None of the evidence describes an existential-scale event between 2018 and 2023. The Bulletin's 2023 statements set the Doomsday Clock at its closest-ever setting and call Russian nuclear threats the worst nuclear development of 2022 (E1, E2), but they describe heightened risk, not a credible imminent nuclear exchange. Late in the period, AI risk drew prominent attention: in May 2023 a statement from the Center for AI Safety called mitigating the risk of extinction from AI a global priority (E4), and in November 2023 the Bletchley Declaration recorded agreement among countries on the potential for 'serious, even catastrophic' harm from frontier AI (E3). That matches the criteria's "mostly true" case.