x-risk

A form of existential risk — A risk which could destroy or permanently damage an entity; a risk to one's existence.

Meanings

x-risk1

nounx-risk (countable and uncountable, plural x-risks)

plural x-risks

  1. abbreviationcountableinitialismuncountableInitialism of existential risk.

    Suppose also that you think AI is the most pressing x-risk, because (1) mitigating AI risk could mitigate all other existential risks, but not vice-versa, and because (2) AI is plausibly the first existential risk that will occur.

    2012 November 13, Luke Muelhauser, “How can I reduce existential risk from AI?”, in LessWrong, archived from the original on 15 Dec 2019
    1 more example

    There are a number of potential candidates for most threatening X-risk. Personally I worry most about global pandemics, both because things like the Black Death and the Spanish flu have caused massive death before, and because globalization and the dawn of synthetic biology have made diseases both easier to spread and easier to tweak (intentionally or not) for maximum lethality. But I'm in the minority on that. The only X-risk basically anyone wanted to talk about at the conference was artificial intelligence.

    2015 August 10, Dylan Matthews, “I spent a weekend at Google talking with nerds about charity. I came away … worried.”, in Vox

X-risk2

nounX-risk (plural X-risks)

plural X-risks

  1. alternativeAlternative form of x-risk.
Cite this entry
APA

x-risk. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/x-risk

MLA

“x-risk.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/x-risk. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “x-risk,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/x-risk.

Source: x-risk on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.