{"id":631367,"date":"2026-09-21T12:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T12:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631367\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T12:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T12:06:15","slug":"if-ai-has-a-10-chance-of-killing-us-all-by-2030-should-i-invest-in-a-pension-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631367\/","title":{"rendered":"If AI has a \u201810% chance\u2019 of killing us all by 2030, should I invest in a pension? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reports from Silicon Valley this month on the odds of artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a> obliterating humanity by 2030 are enough to make one crack open the piggy bank and go wild. Why invest in a pension when there is a more than 10 per cent chance of all humans being killed by the time the next Fifa World Cup rolls around?<\/p>\n

That specific forecast was made by a \u201cwhistleblower\u201d researcher in tech firm Anthropic<\/a>. Far from downplaying the prophecy, the company\u2019s boss Dario Amodei later warned an AI swarm could be capable of \u201ctaking over the entire internet\u201d within a year. And in a rare show of unity among money-grabbing mega-egos Elon Musk<\/a> and Sam Altman \u2013 who are responsible for chatbots Grok and ChatGPT<\/a> \u2013 backed calls to \u201cslow the pace\u201d of AI development.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on? And how should ordinary citizens like you and I respond to this outbreak in AI doomer vibes? Scary as the prospect is of robots lasering us to death through our devices, what\u2019s more immediately terrifying is the idea of someone like Musk positioning himself as the responsible face of AI development. Or indeed Altman, aptly described by Oliver Callan on his RT\u00c9 Radio show as \u201canother one who is dead behind the eyes\u201d.<\/p>\n

To make sense of it all, Unthinkable turned to Carissa V\u00e9liz, who had the foresight to write a book recently on the very subject \u2013 Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI (Swift Press).<\/p>\n

In 2023, a group of nine \u201cexpert forecasters\u201d said there was a 30.5 per cent probability of an AI catastrophe killing most of humanity by the year 2200. But another study, involving 89 \u201csuperforecasters\u201d \u2013 people who had a better than average record of prediction \u2013 and other experts put the odds of a mega-disaster much lower. They estimated a 2.1 per cent chance of an AI-caused catastrophe killing at least 10 per cent of the population, and a 0.38 per cent chance of an AI-caused extinction by the end of the century.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy own assessment is that the superforecasters are probably closer to an accurate prediction,\u201d writes V\u00e9liz. \u201cBut the point is this: predictions are all over the place because we are clueless, which suggests those predictions are not saying much about the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CarissaCarissa V\u00e9liz, author of Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI. Photograph: Jorge Monedero <\/p>\n

Speaking to The Irish Times this week, she doubled down on her scepticism about AI Armageddon. An associate professor of philosophy at University of Oxford\u2019s institute for AI ethics, V\u00e9liz says the first thing to remember about predictions is that they are guesses, not facts. The second thing to remember is that predictions are \u201cwishful\u201d \u2013 what we desire influences our outlook.<\/p>\n

She says some people have a larger appetite for risk than others. But this doesn\u2019t fully explain why some people downplay the dangers of AI, while others play them up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suspect there [are] myriad reasons why some people take the odds of existential risk more seriously than others … Emotional intelligence, historical perspective, and having some idea \u2013 or not \u2013 of the limits of prediction seem like important factors,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018A lot of \u2019em can\u2019t even spell AI\u2019: The technology-extinction debate convulses AmericaOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s also the question of whether people believe what they say. For some, it might be a marketing strategy, at least in part. And yes, differences in appetite for risk seem likely to factor in too.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s vital to remark, first, that many of the tech executives making decisions might think they are more immune to risk, with their fortunes and their bunkers, than they actually are. Second, and relatedly, the people who are carrying most of the risk are not the ones making the decisions. Much like bankers in the financial crisis of 2008, many people are gambling with other people\u2019s lives more than their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"OpenAIOpenAI chief executive Sam Altman. Photograph: Benjamin Fanjoy\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

V\u00e9liz urges the public to be wary of tech companies \u201cselling risk management while increasing systemic risk\u201d. So are doomer forecasts more harmful than helpful?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I think these forecasts \u2013 more precisely, people paying so much attention to them, and panicking over them \u2013 does increase risk. An environment of fear is typically conducive to higher risks. People can get paralysed, or willing to hand over more power to those who do not deserve it in exchange for the promise of safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a post this week on her Substack website, she elaborated. \u201cProphets impose their view of the future on you.\u201d But \u201cthe future doesn\u2019t get predicted \u2013 it gets produced\u201d.<\/p>\n

While we are dazzled by new technology, V\u00e9liz says \u201cthe greatest inventions of humanity are social and political\u201d \u2013 and chief among them is democracy. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Will AI kill us all?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Some AI bosses think we\u2019ll be happy to give up our democratic rights for the latest chatbot update \u2013 Altman has floated visions<\/a> of future societies where humans prop up privately-owned AI utilities underwritten by cryptocurrency. Big tech is in for a surprise \u2013 that\u2019s my prediction \u2013 because, weirdly enough, people like democracy more than they like their smartphones.<\/p>\n

In her book, V\u00e9liz notes that comedy can be a surprising \u201cally in our challenge to defy the odds\u201d. Why? Because \u201ccomedy sets the tone for freedom\u201d.<\/p>\n

So don\u2019t be downbeat over recent AI forecasts. Don\u2019t be fatalistic. It\u2019s good news in a way: The odds on humans still existing by 2030 are almost 90 per cent. Make the most of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reports from Silicon Valley this month on the odds of artificial intelligence (AI) obliterating humanity by 2030 are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,3673,218,219,2670,256936,605,4069,61,60,1682,7689,80,103211],"class_list":["post-631367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-anthropic","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-chatgpt","tag-dario-amodi","tag-elon-musk","tag-grok","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-openai","tag-sam-altman","tag-technology","tag-unthinkable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}