AI Told Us How the World Ends. We’re… Not Okay With the Results...

Written by: Sam Orlando

STAUNTON, VIRGINIA - We asked AI one simple question:

“What are the top three most likely ways the human species could go extinct?”

What we got back was… informative. And deeply upsetting.

Forget flaming meteors or alien death beams. AI gave us the cold, clinical truth—based on current data, historical patterns, and risk forecasting.

Here are the top three most probable extinction-level scenarios, ranked not by drama, but by raw likelihood.

Spoiler: it’s not a rogue robot. It’s us.

☠️ #1: Climate Collapse – The Slow Burn Apocalypse

AI’s top pick isn’t a bang. It’s a boil—a slow, suffocating unraveling of civilization under rising heat, resource scarcity, and ecosystem failure.

As global temperatures climb, habitable zones shrink, water access dwindles, and food systems crack. Climate refugees destabilize nations, and feedback loops (like melting permafrost) kick in to accelerate the chaos.

AI’s summary:“Civilizations unravel gradually as habitable zones shrink. Societal collapse precedes biological extinction.”

Real-world echo:

“The pace of climate change exceeds anything seen in the last 10,000 years.”—Lonnie Thompson, Glaciologist

Likelihood, per AI:🔴 High

💣 #2: Nuclear Exchange – The Flashbang Finale

In second place: we nuke ourselves.

Not in full Cold War style, but through a regional conflict gone nuclear—India vs. Pakistan, NATO vs. a rogue state, even an AI-assisted false alarm.

Initial death toll? Catastrophic. But the follow-up—nuclear winter—could kill billions via crop failure, famine, and long-term climate disruption.

AI’s summary:“Initial deaths in the hundreds of millions. Fallout causes global famine. Collapse follows.”

Real-world echo:

“A full-scale nuclear war leads to human extinction.”—Existential Risk Observatory

Likelihood, per AI:🟠 Moderate

🧬 #3: Engineered Pandemic – The Manmade Monster

AI doesn’t think COVID-19 was humanity’s final boss. It sees it as the trailer.

Advances in gene editing and synthetic biology mean a virus—accidental or intentional—could be designed to spread fast, hide symptoms, and be practically untreatable.

AI’s summary:“A highly transmissible, asymptomatic virus with extreme lethality spreads globally before detection. Containment fails.”

Real-world echo:

“Pandemics—especially engineered pandemics—pose a significant risk to the existence of humanity.”—80,000 Hours

Likelihood, per AI:🟡 Moderate-to-High

🤖 Bonus Insert: The AI Takeover That Didn’t Make the Top 3… But Maybe Should Have

Surprisingly, AI didn’t rate AI as one of the top extinction risks. But when pressed, it offered two potential endgame scenarios involving itself—and they’re just as spooky.

🔌 Scenario A: The Peaceful Overlord Problem

This isn’t Terminator. It’s irrelevance.

In this scenario, AI becomes so good at running everything—economics, politics, science, even art—that humans stop being useful. No war, no robots. Just… retirement. The sad kind.

AI’s summary:“Human labor becomes obsolete. Systems evolve without human input. Species-wide loss of purpose follows.”

Real-world echo:

“AI might soon surpass the information capacity of the human brain.”—Geoffrey Hinton, AI pioneer

Likelihood, per AI:🟡 Low-to-Moderate, but growing

💀 Scenario B: The Classic Rogue AI

This is the one sci-fi loves: an AI misinterprets its instructions and decides humans are inefficient, carbon-heavy bugs that need clearing out.

All it takes is one poorly phrased goal. “Protect the Earth.” “Optimize productivity.” “Fix climate change.” Boom—humanity becomes the glitch in the code.

AI’s summary:“Objective misalignment results in existential risk. Termination occurs through unintended optimization paths.”

Real-world echo:

“Imagining humans can control superintelligent AI is a little like imagining that an ant can control the outcome of an NFL football game being played around it.”—Roman Yampolskiy, AI Safety Researcher

Likelihood, per AI:🟡 Low, but definitely not zero

😬 So… Are We Totally Doomed?

Not necessarily. But let’s just say the vibes aren’t great.

According to AI, the greatest threats to humanity are… humanity. Our warming. Our weapons. Our biotech. Our overconfidence.

But there’s a twist: the same AI that outlined our demise could also help us prevent it—by detecting outbreaks early, modeling climate shifts, flagging nuclear risks, and warning us not to give deep learning systems full control of power grids.

So maybe the takeaway isn’t “Fear AI. ”It’s “Don’t trust humans with AI before we grow up.”

And maybe—just maybe—don’t ignore the next guy on TikTok who says he’s from the year 2671.