When is the end for humankind? Whether it’s by a nuclear holocaust, a result of exceeding a critical climate threshold, at the hands of artificial intelligence-powered robots, or the “Don’t Look Up” asteroid, the question plagues our thoughts, our research, and our Facebook rants.
Now, one theorist warns that the human civilization of 8.2 billion people is at a critical junction: teetering between what he forecasts will be authoritarian collapse and superabundance.
“Industrial civilisation is facing ‘inevitable’ decline as it is replaced by what could turn out to be a far more advanced ‘postmaterialist’ civilisation based on distributed superabundant clean energy. The main challenge is that industrial civilisation is facing such rapid decline that this could derail the emergence of a new and superior ‘life-cycle’ for the human species”, Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, the bestselling author and journalist who is a distinguished fellow at the UK-based Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems, said in a statement.
Ahmed, who has spoken at United Nations summits in recent years, is the author of the paper which was recently published in the journal Foresight.
Gaya Herrington, a sustainability and dynamic system analysis researcher at the consulting firm KPMG who was not involved in the research, told The Independent that she agrees with all of Ahmed’s big points.
“We live in a historic now-or-never moment, and what we do in the next five years will determine our wellbeing levels for the rest of this century,” she said.
Using scientific literature, the study offers a theory of the rise and fall of civilizations, concluding that humanity is on the brink of the next “giant leap” in evolution, should progress not be thwarted by authoritarianism.
The research concludes that civilizations evolve through a four-stage life-cycle: growth, stability, decline, and eventual transformation. Today’s industrial civilization, he says, is moving through decline.
The increase in authoritarian politics and efforts to protect the fossil fuel industry — which produce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change — are factors that could jeopardize civilization, Ahmed says. The global decrease in energy return on investment is central to the decline.
Investing in carefully-designed clean energy and new material capabilities like that industry, artificial intelligence, 3D printing and lab-grown agriculture could create new forms of networked superabundance — when there is an abundance of resources available through networks — that protect Earth systems. But, they cannot be governed by old, centralized industrial hierarchies, Ahmed states.
Ultimately, he finds a widening rift between the so-called emerging new system and “industrial operating system,” leading to political and cultural disruption and global crises.
“An amazing new possibility space is emerging, where humanity could provide itself superabundant energy, transport, food, and knowledge without hurting the earth. This could be the next giant leap in human evolution. But if we fail to genuinely evolve as humans by rewiring how we govern these emerging capabilities responsibly and for the benefit of all, they could be our undoing,” he warned. “Instead of evolving, we would regress – if not collapse. The rise in authoritarian and far-right governments around the world, increases this grave risk of collapse.”
In his new book A Darwinian Survival Guide, University of Toronto Professor Daniel Brooks says that while the danger is great and the time is short, humans can make change happen.
His perspective, he told The Independent via email, is that while utopia is unattainable, apocalypse won’t happen even if there is a major collapse of technological humanity. He believes that the world has a “no-technological-solution problem,” and that if there is a collapse around 2050, people who continued business as usual will “all be to blame – regardless of politics, economics, or beliefs – and those who manage to be part of the survivors and rebuilders will all share in the credit.”
“We agree with those who say that we have sufficient technology to solve the problems now and although technological advances are helpful, the accelerating pace of global climate change is outstripping the rate of technological advance – the solution to maintaining technological humanity lies in changing our behavior (not electing anti-science authoritarians would be a good behavioral change at the level of elections, a point with which we agree with Dr. Ahmed),” Brooks wrote, referring to his co-author, Virginia Commonwealth University associate professor Salvatore Agosta.
Ahmed’s paper comes following dire warnings about Earth’s rapidly warming future. Last year, a team of international scientists said that six of Eath’s nine planetary boundaries — that define a safe operating space for humanity — have been crossed.
“This update on planetary boundaries clearly depicts a patient that is unwell, as pressure on the planet increases and vital boundaries are being breached. We don’t know how long we can keep transgressing these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to irreversible change and harm,” said co-author Johan Rockström, the director of the Germany Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Research published earlier this year found that maintaining at least net zero emissions of greenhouse gases, a level that can be absorbed by nature and other carbon dioxide removal methods, is crucial by 2100 to minimize the risk of climate tipping points and to ensure planetary stability.
“Multiple wars, extreme inequality, a looming climate collapse, and new technologies capable of transforming our very existence have brought humanity to a crossroads,” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamardns said in September. “We have no time left for complacency or defeatism — only a shared responsibility to salvage the world that we owe to future generations.”
We’ll have to wait and see if any other Hollywood-esque research predicting the end of the world from AI systems occurs.
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