The economics of p(doom): Scenarios of existential risk and economic growth in the age of transformative AI

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have facilitated a wide range of predictions about its long-term impact on humanity. A central focus is the potential emergence of transformative AI (TAI), eventually capable of outperforming humans in all economically valuable tasks and fully automating labor. Potential scenarios range from unprecedented economic growth and abundance ("post-scarcity" or "cornucopia") to human extinction following a misaligned TAI takeover ("AI doom"). However, the probabilities and implications of these scenarios remain highly uncertain. This study contributes by organizing the various scenarios and evaluating their associated existential risks and economic outcomes in terms of aggregate welfare. The results imply that even low-probability catastrophic outcomes justify substantial investments in AI safety and alignment research. This emphasizes that current global efforts in AI safety and alignment research are insufficient relative to the scale and urgency of the risks posed by TAI.