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. 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.” Since the end of the Cold War took nuclear war off the agenda — temporarily, at least — the calculations behind the Doomsday Clock have grown to encompass climate change, biosecurity, the degradation of US public health infrastructure, new technological risks like “mirror life,” artificial intelligence, and autocracy.
Author: Bryan Walsh
Published at: 2026-01-27 21:39:13
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