  Humankind faces many existential threats, but has limited resources to
mitigate them. Choosing how and when to deploy those resources is, therefore, a
fateful decision. Here, I analyze the priority for allocating resources to
mitigate the risk of superintelligences.
  Part I observes that a superintelligence unconnected to the outside world
(de-efferented) carries no threat, and that any threat from a harmful
superintelligence derives from the peripheral systems to which it is connected,
e.g., nuclear weapons, biotechnology, etc. Because existentially-threatening
peripheral systems already exist and are controlled by humans, the initial
effects of a superintelligence would merely add to the existing human-derived
risk. This additive risk can be quantified and, with specific assumptions, is
shown to decrease with the square of the number of humans having the capability
to collapse civilization.
  Part II proposes that biotechnology ranks high in risk among peripheral
systems because, according to all indications, many humans already have the
technological capability to engineer harmful microbes having pandemic spread.
Progress in biomedicine and computing will proliferate this threat. ``Savant''
software that is not generally superintelligent will underpin much of this
progress, thereby becoming the software responsible for the highest and most
imminent existential risk -- ahead of hypothetical risk from
superintelligences.
  The analysis concludes that resources should be preferentially applied to
mitigating the risk of peripheral systems and savant software. Concerns about
superintelligence are at most secondary, and possibly superfluous.
