Pondering the end of the world turns out to be a 21st-century preoccupation. Doomsday has never seemed nearer than now. “Polls conducted in 2012 across 20 countries found over 14% of people believe the world will end in their lifetime… The general public believed the likeliest cause would be nuclear war, while experts thought it would be artificial intelligence. Only 3% of Britons thought the end would be caused by the Last Judgement.” No longer are we so certain that the Arc of History goes to a good place. Today, experts at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge believe that the greatest threat to human existence is scientific man himself and cite the following as chief dangers: * Artificial intelligence * Biotechnology * Nanotechnology * Environmental disaster * Nuclear war. Two of these possibilities, if one excludes Thunberg’s apocalyptic climate fears, are actually in the news nearly daily: the danger that Vladimir Putin might start a nuclear war in Ukraine and the debate over whether Covid-19 may have started as a U.S. government-funded gain-of-function biotechnological experiment in Wuhan, China. A third, artificial intelligence, also figures in a censorial role… (READ MORE)

Category: Featured Articles