Experts say AI slop and a failure of leadership is bringing us to the brink of global chaos | Latest Tech News
Tick tick growth?
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved its Doomsday Clock ahead for 2026, saying that it is now set to 85 seconds to midnight –— the closest it’s ever been to disaster in its 79-year historical past.
“It is the determination of the bulletin’s science and security board that humanity has not made sufficient progress on the existential risks that endanger us all. We thus move the clock forward,” the group’s CEO, Alexandra Bell, announced on Tuesday.
It is 85 second until midnight, according to the Doomsday Clock.
Steve Fetter, a member of org’s Science and Security Board told The Post that their determination “reflects the increased risk of catastrophe resulting from current trends,” including the looming menace of nuclear warfare, disease, and the rise of AI.
Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later as a metaphor for how close humanity is to destroying itself.
In 1947, the Doomsday Clock was set at 7 minutes to midnight.
Last 12 months, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists set the clock at 89 seconds to midnight — that means we’ve jumped ahead 4 seconds in the past 12 months.
However, the clock wasn’t devised as a sport clock for armageddon, but reasonably a motivational device aimed at inspiring us to resolve “the world’s most urgent, man-made existential threats.”
Russia’s nuclear succesful missile “Orehsnik.” Anadolu via Getty Images
Nonetheless, if this alarming clock is to be believed, our darkest hour may very well be at hand, per the Bulletin.
They cited a “failure of leadership” worldwide as the purpose why Doomsday ticked nearer to Midnight.
“Major countries became even more aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic,” lamented Daniel Holtz, a Bulletin member and physics professor at the University Of Chicago, during the convention. “Conflicts intensified in 2025 with multiple military operations involving nuclear-armed states.”
These tensions ramped up over the summer season when nuclear powers Pakistan and India border engaged in border skirmishes and escalated threats of full-scale warfare.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, Russia fired a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile at Ukraine in a retaliatory strike for an alleged assault on an official residence of President Vladimir Putin.
Holtz bemoaned the fact that the New START Treaty, which restricts nations’ strategic nuclear arsenals, is slated to expire on Feb. 5.
“For the first time in over half a century, there will be nothing preventing a runaway nuclear arms race,” he rued.
Doomsday (pictured) is up to date yearly based on this dystopian metric — the nearer the palms get to hanging 12, the nearer we’re to the end and vice versa. AP
And nuclear warfare isn’t the only existential menace dealing with humanity, according to this league of doomsdayers.
During the convention, journalist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Maria Pressa also warned about the rise of “generative AI, which she said accelerated “global chaos” by disseminating “floods of synthetic disinformation” at “near zero cost.”
She spoke of “AI slop victimizing millions in scams” and “supercharging the dysfunction in our information ecosystem.”
Along with permitting faux news to proliferate, the tech may even be used to engineer lethal illnesses.
“One clear risk is the use of AI to design novel pathogens—particularly pathogens that don’t exist in nature and for which no countermeasures exist,” Fetter told the Post. “There also are risks associated with incorporating AI into military systems, particularly if AI is used to make lethal decisions or humans come to rely on AI for such decisions.”
In their new e-book “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would eliminate Us All,” pc scientists Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares warned that the human race shall be annihilated by artificial viruses and other means if we don’t hit the kill change.
Fortunately, the Bulletin members declare that humanity can wind back the clock on the apocalypse.
“It [The Doomsday Clock] is ticking, but it can be turned back,” Pressa declared. “Now is the time to act. We need technology platforms redesigned around human rights, not engagement metrics. We need AI governance that prioritizes safety over speed.”
“Information integrity is the mother of all battles because you can’t run democracy on a corrupted operating system,” she added. “You can’t turn back the doomsday clock when half the world doesn’t believe these problems even exist.”
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