Mailbag XLI: Is AI Going to Wipe Us Out? | AI Extinction Risk, Doomscrolling, Climate Anxiety, Economic Fear, and the Future of Humanity

Is artificial intelligence going to wipe out humanity?

Could AI cause human extinction within the next ten years?

Are we living through the beginning of a global collapse, or are our minds being asked to process so many real and possible threats at once that the future itself has begun to feel like an emergency?

In Mailbag XLI of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey responds to listener Sarah F., who writes that she is “scared to death” by what she sees happening in the world.

She’s worried about artificial intelligence.

The economy.

Natural disasters.

Political and social frustration.

The possibility that AI could eventually destroy humanity.

And beneath all of it is a more personal question:

How do you keep your common sense when everything arriving through the screen seems to say that the world is coming apart?

The episode begins with the question Sarah most needs answered: