Extinction Bounties

Policy-based deterrence for the 21st century.

Policy-Research Disclaimer (click to close)

Extinction Bounties publishes theoretical economic and legal mechanisms intended to stimulate scholarly and public debate on catastrophic-risk governance. The site offers policy analysis and advocacy only in the sense of outlining possible legislative or contractual frameworks.

  • No Legal or Financial Advice. Nothing here should be treated as a substitute for qualified legal counsel, financial due-diligence, or regulatory guidance. Stakeholders remain responsible for ensuring their actions comply with the laws and professional standards of their own jurisdictions.
  • Exploratory & Personal Views. All scenarios, numerical examples and opinions are research hypotheses presented by the author in an academic capacity. They do not represent the views of the author’s employer, funding bodies, or any governmental authority.
  • Implementation Caveats. Any real-world adoption of these ideas would require democratic deliberation, statutory authority, and robust safeguards to prevent misuse. References to enforcement, penalties, or “bounties” are illustrative models, not instructions or invitations to engage in private policing or unlawful conduct.
  • No Warranty & Limited Liability. Content is provided “as is” without warranty of completeness or accuracy; the author disclaims liability for losses arising from reliance on this material.

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Our 2-minute elevator pitch

Modern Proponents of Anti-Humanity Thought

In Intellectual History of Anti-Humanity Thought we gave a brief overview of the long extant thread of thinking that the continued existence of humanity was, at best, morally insignificant, and at worst a grave harm to be rectified, from a series of different angles. This page is a little different: Here we record public statements from living people which seem to echo or further develop these lines of thinking.

The intent is to create a long-running archive that, if nothing else, will allow people to answer the question

But nobody is actually saying they want humanity to go extinct, right?

with a resounding No.

A great deal of credit must be given to Twitter user @softminus for collecting and investigating this trend since at least 2022 if not earlier. We actively solicit examples for this page - please email them to us.

Michael Levin

Michael Levin’s paper AI: a Bridge toward Diverse Intelligence and Humanity’s Future (note: PDF link) gives the impression that the author sees the eventual eclipse of un-augmented Homo sapiens by more advanced intelligences not as a catastrophe but as a natural, even welcome, stage in our collective development. Some quotes:

Let’s get over the concern with being edged out, and get to work on the question of what kind of beings deserve to inherit the future, to raise the overall value of our universe.

The concept that human beings themselves are not fit to ‘inherit the future’ is obviously not one we agree with, nor do we agree that a universe without human beings in it could be considered valuable by any common-sense moral compass.

Personally, if I (and humanity) are supplanted by a population of highly intelligent, motivated, creative agents… what better outcome could I hope for?

For those more skeptical of our stance, we note that the term “paperclip maximizer” appears nowhere in Levin’s essay. Paperclip maximizers appear to be one of the more likely agents to emerge from a superintelligent AI, cf Bostrom’s Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, and they are not “intelligent, motivated, [and] creative” in any way we would recognize as relatable or inherently laudatory. It appears Levin discounts this possibility wholesale for unknown reasons.

[Intentionally engineered minds are] going to change everything. In fact, they absolutely will supplant us – both personally and on the level of societies.

The stated inevitability here is obviously not one we agree with, given that we have proposed an economic mechanism to avert that very fate. Levin may be committing the “You can’t stop progress” fallacy here, which is a common refrain of these types.

Levin couches his argument in the language of “maturity” and “species-level progress”, but most ordinary readers would find the premises - especially the implied end state - chilling. In everyday moral common sense, humanity’s continued existence is treated as a non-negotiable good, comparable to wishing for the continued existence of one’s self, one’s family, or one’s country.

If you’re not in the mood to download the PDF, Levin authored a shorter version of this essay in Noema Magazine.