The HKCRC investigates these areas and topics:
- Catastrophic risks (definition, quantification and comparison, risk factors)
- Existential risks (definition, comparison among x-risks, badness of human extinction)
- Future generations (obligations, inter-generational justice)
- Ethics of risk imposition
- Ethics of scientific research
- Ethics and philosophy of AI
- Global catastrophic biological risks
- Decision theory (risk and uncertainty)
- Environmental ethics (climate change, environmental risks)
- Global health priority-setting
- Great powers confrontation and nuclear weapons
- Quality of life and well-being
- Population ethics
- Long-termism
- Ethics of vaccination
- Misinformation and disinformation as catastrophic risks
- Effective altruism
- Collective/group agency
- International collaboration/government
- Comparative institutional analysis
- Epistemic risk
