One shortcoming of the survey is it did not give a timeline for human extinction. Do they mean 10% odds by AI and 90% by something else (because all species go extinct eventually)? Do they mean 10% by a certain date?
I don't think population collapse will go to 0 because some cultures like the Amish, Hasidim, and Falun Dafa, will reject modern technology and women's rights and continue to produce children. AI isn't necessary incompatible with reproduction either. We might lower the cost of child care enough by using robots to make it attractive. In any case, women who want children will pass on their genes and culture. Evolution always wins. My other concern is self replicating nanotechnology displacing DNA based life. This is a potential risk because solar cells are more efficient than photosynthesis. Currently, plants use about 0.3% of 90,000 TW of available solar energy at the surface, but solar panels are already 20-30% efficient. We can calculate the efficiency of plants from the atmospheric carbon cycle, 210 billion tons per year or 7000 tons per second, equivalent to 17,500 tons of carbohydrate, or 300 TW at 4 Kcal = 16.7 KJ per gram. By comparison, humans consume 18 TW of electricity and 1 TW of food. We can use Moore's law to estimate when the computing power of self replicating nanotechnology surpasses the biosphere. The biosphere contains 5 x 10^36 DNA base pairs, or 10^37 bits. Global storage capacity was 100 to 175 zettabytes (about 10^24 bits) in 2023-2025, up from 0.3 ZB in 2007, doubling every 2 years. Assuming this continues, we have until about the year 2110. If we control the nanotechnology, then we have enough power to support 100 trillion people at 100 watts each by making synthetic foods using 11% of available energy, or else it destroys the base of the food chain, killing all DNA based life. -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] On Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 8:46 PM Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> wrote: > I was expecting more, but nobody knows. It was just a survey of 3000 AI > experts. About half put the probability of human extinction above 10%. > Their main concerns were malicious use, misinformation, losing jobs, and > loss of privacy. > https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01257-6 > > -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] > ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T3f5dc382772a93f4-M0abb5aa040fd6222b8e4017b Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
