Not everyone wants to rule the world, but it does seem lately as if everyone wants to warn the world might be ending.

On Tuesday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists unveiled their annual resetting of the Doomsday Clock, which is meant to visually represent how close the experts at the organization feel that the world is to ending. Reflecting a cavalcade of existential risks ranging from worsening nuclear tensions to climate change to the rise of autocracy, the hands were set to 85 seconds to midnight, four seconds closer than in 2025 and the closest the clock has ever been to striking 12.

The day before, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei — who may as well be the field of artificial intelligence’s philosopher-king — published a 19,000-word essay entitled “The Adolescence of Technology.” His takeaway: “Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it.”

Should we fail this “serious civilizational challenge,” as Amodei put it, the world might well be headed for the pitch black of midnight. (Disclosure: Future Perfect is funded in part by the BEMC Foundation, whose major funder was also an early investor in Anthropic; they don’t have any editorial input into our content.)

As I’ve said before, it’s boom times for doom times. But examining these two very different attempts at communicating existential risk — one very much a product of the mid-20th century, the other of our own uncertain moment — presents a question. Who should we listen to? The prophets shouting outside the gates? Or the high priest who also runs the temple?

Tick, tock

The Doomsday Clock has been with us so long — it was created in 1947, just two years after the first nuclear weapon incinerated Hiroshima — that it’s easy to forget how radical it was. Not just the Clock itself, which may be one of the most iconic and effective symbols of the 20th century, but the people who made it.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded immediately after the war by........

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