Scientist predicted world will finish this week – he is already been right about AI
A team of experts predicted the world faces doomsday this week – and one of the researchers has already proven to be worryingly accurate about artificial intelligence
Experts predicted doomsday will arrive on Friday (stock)(Image: Anadolu via Getty Images)
An expert predicted that the world will end on Friday (November 13) with a horrifying doomsday prediction. And more worryingly, one of the experts behind the research accurately forecast the rise of artificial intelligence decades ago.
The modern world is challenging enough, with the world seemingly on the brink of war and economic pressures causing widespread instability. If that was not enough, though, a long-forgotten prediction about the collapse of civilization has emerged again.
The prestigious academic publication Science featured research from distinguished scholars at the University of Illinois back in 1960. They said a potential apocalyptic scenario could occur on Friday, November 13, 2026 – which is in just three days time.
The research team consisted of Heinz von Foerster, Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amiot. They reached their chilling conclusion by analysing demographic patterns across Western civilisation.
Rather than an apocalyptic nuclear war or natural disaster wiping out humanity, though, they predicted the end of civilisation would actually be caused by overpopulation. Their theory centred on the Earth hitting its breaking point due to the world’s population expanded.
The Doomsday Clock(Image: Hastings Group Media/AFP via Get)
When their findings were published, around three billion people lived on the planet – that figured has now multiplied to a whopping 8.3 billion and growing. This particular study has gained traction because it is rooted in scientific theory.
One of the co-authors, Austrian-American Heinz von Foerster, made what turned out to be an incredibly perceptive insight into the dangers posed by AI more than 30 years ago.
Speaking to The Information Philosopher, he touched on the implications of using the emerging technology. Von Foerster, who died in 2002, warned against making the mistake that AI “thinks” the same way as humans do.
He said that even when AI executes tasks appearing intelligent, it doesn’t equate to human understanding. He called the assumption “dangerous”.
Von Foerster and his colleagues used 24 estimates of the world population stretching across the past 2,000 years to show that numbers have in fact continually outpaced expectations.
Heinz von Foerster has already been right about AI (stock)
The worldwide population is expected to peak at around 10.3 billion around the mid-2080s, a truly huge number. It will then begin to drop eventually.
While the article was regularly cited, and its predictions appeared to be remarkably accurate initially, around 1993 the global population increase began falling behind its forecasts.
As far back as 1798, British economist Thomas Malthus said that humanity would exhaust its food supply at some pointed. He said: “Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature.
“The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.”
Malthus made his remarks during the industrial revolution. Agricultural innovations have successfully matched the rising global population’s food demands up to this point.
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