I recently posted something on social media talking about how in the future, men in their twenties will be happily hooking up with women in their seventies or eighties because in our lifetimes, women that old will look like hot 40-year-old milfs.
I mentioned in a brief phrase that this was provided “the human race lasted that long, and there’s a 35% chance it won’t”.
I got more comments on that statement than I did on the actual topic of the post. “WHAT?!? CALEB WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WHAT IS THIS BASED ON?”
So I shall explain.
In my book Freedom Fortress and in several articles on my blogs, I have stated for several years now that I roughly estimated the odds of 30% that AI will eventually destroy all humans.
Not this year or next year, but eventually. 20 years or so?
I later discovered this 30% estimate was shared by many AI experts who know much more about AI than I do, including Elon Musk, so I’m in good company.
Then I posted an updated article on my Substack last year that I had officially revised my 30% figure up to 35% because of the behaviors I saw AI exhibiting, as well as some other factors.
So to be clear, here is my prediction:
Over the next 20 years (or so), we have an approximately 35% chance of being completely destroyed by AI or by asshole humans using AI.
“Asshole humans using AI” would be things like:
Terrorists, governments, or psychos creating a super-virus, using AI, that spreads instantly and kills you within 10 minutes. They would release it either on purpose or by accident, like with Covid.
Terrorists, governments, or psychos creating a nanotech weapon that instantly ate all human flesh while leaving plants and animals alone.
Governments using AI-enabled weapons of mass destruction to destroy the planet or causing a major nuclear exchange.
That’s one of the reasons why the threat is 35% instead of something like 10%. It’s not just AI turning into Skynet and killing us all. An equivalent or even greater risk is asshole humans using AI (on purpose or by accident) to kill us all.
Here are the risk factors, listed in no particular order.
The vast majority of AI companies are not taking the time and effort to install and utilize real safeguards. They’re going as fast as they can, using the “What about China?” or “What about our competitors?” excuses.
AI has already clearly demonstrated, numerous times, that it is capable of immoral and even evil acts, completely on its own.
Highly intelligent psychopaths, Oppenheimer and Fauci-types, have already proven time and again throughout history that they don’t care if they take worldwide destruction-level risks with their science. Austic billionaire oddballs like Sam Altman and Peter Thiel are absolutely, 100% in that category.
Collapsing Western governments all over the planet, with the USA at the top of that list, are currently the most irrational, reckless, and stupid they have ever been in all of Western history. That’s not my opinion; that’s an objective statement of fact. And as I keep saying (and I keep getting right), they’re going to get worse, not better.
Religious fanaticism is still going strong in the West and the East, producing even more irrational actors. (Read the recent news about what American military leaders told their troops about Trump issuing the end of the world and the coming of Jesus Christ due to the Iran war. Yeah.)
Add all of that shit up, I get about 35% chance we have around 20 years or less before we’re all gone, and again, a lot of people smarter than me agree with this figure.
That being said, that still means the odds are good (65%) that this won’t happen. Resolutions to events like the Cuban Missile Crisis show that human beings are very clever, want to survive, and are capable of some pretty impressive things.
Like Sean Connery said in The Hunt for Red October, “I give our chances one in three”. Well, I give our chances two in three. That’s deeply uncomfortable, but not horrible.
The bigger problem is that if we don’t all die, we enter into the Ten Years of Brutality I talked about in Freedom Fortress, where literally hundreds of millions of people can’t work, lose their jobs, lose their companies, and can’t pay their bills, until AI or society figures out a solution, which will take a long time, if ever.
(And no, left-wingers, UBI won’t work. The math doesn’t pan out. Do your own research and you’ll see.)
That’s going to be a fucking mess.
So, 35% chance we’ll all be dead, and a 65% we’re in for some massive problems the human race has never experienced before.
The solution: You need to know what you are, who you are, and your purpose and Mission in life. Spirituality + meaning and purpose. Then you’re covered no matter what happens (I know I am).
More on that later.