Not too long ago, on these very pages, I had shared my thoughts on the human race and our apparent desire for mass extinction. I argued that, for a species that had achieved so much, we are — and I quote — “incredibly stupid.” I suggested that if we continued destroying the planet, we’d soon be joining the ranks of the dinosaur and the dodo.

And while I continue to stand by my earlier assessment that our species, despite repeated interventions and stern warnings, is like a determined toddler, hell-bent on plugging a fork into an electric socket, I have to admit that I was wrong about ‘how’ we were going to go out.

So, I apologise. I got it wrong.

Recent events have rendered initial predictions about human extinction both incorrect and frankly, poorly researched. Turns out, we were being unnecessarily pessimistic. Even though the planet is on fire, extreme temperatures will not be the ones to knock us out of the evolutionary game. (So much for our soggy paper straws.)

Instead, we’ve decided to build something that could get the job done sooner: Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Climate change was supposed to be our undoing. Turns out we found a quicker way, and the people building it are the ones sounding the alarm

Climate change was supposed to be our undoing. Turns out we found a quicker way, and the people building it are the ones sounding the alarm

And if Jack Clark, co-founder of AI giant Anthropic, Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger, and Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, aka “Godfather of AI”, are to be believed, the smart machines we’ve proudly been building could pull the ultimate reverse Uno card and wipe us out.

In fact, some experts warn that there is a more than a 10 percent chance AI “could kill all humans in the next decade.” That puts the deadline around 2036, which means we can........

© Dawn (Magazines)