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Existential risk
A risk that could end humanity, or close off its future for good.
A business can recover from a bad quarter, a lawsuit or a lost customer. It cannot recover from being shut down, because there is no next quarter in which to fix anything. Existential risk is that distinction applied to humanity as a whole: not a disaster that is terrible and survivable, but one with no way back, through extinction or through a permanent loss of the future people could otherwise have had. The idea predates AI and is also applied to engineered pandemics and nuclear war. It is often shortened to x-risk.
Why it matters
Most risk management assumes you get to learn from the mistake. This category is defined by the fact that you do not.