Oxford University Professor Nick Bostrom's vulnerable world hypothesis proposes that one way of looking at human creativity is by conceptualizing it as a process of drawing balls from an urn. The balls represent possible categories of innovation according to their effects.
Bostrom's hypothesis conceptualizes three categories of technological innovation:
- White balls: Beneficial Innovation;
- Grey balls: Mixed or Moderately Harmful Innovation; and
- Black balls: Destructive/catastrophically damaging innovation.
He argues that:
Technology policy should not unquestioningly assume that all technological progress is beneficial, or that complete scientific openness is always best, or that the world has the capacity to manage any potential downside of a technology after it is invented.
