How much of a control freak you are will determine how well you do in the robot apocalypse. On Monday night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart interviewed Jacob Coxon, a former researcher at OpenAI and Anthropic who recently resigned and became a whistleblower over concerns that artificial intelligence might eventually wipe out humanity. The people developing the technology that’s supposed to make our lives easier are openly discussing the possibility that it could kill us all. They’re practically placing Kalshi bets on it.
Ten percent. Twenty percent. Twenty-five percent.
Imagine boarding an airplane and having the pilot announce there’s a one-in-four, maybe one-in-five chance of crashing, but the in-flight wifi is free. I’d look for emergency exits before the flight attendants demonstrated fastening my useless seat belt.
What fascinated me most about Stewart’s interview was the discussion of AI’s ultimate endgame: a once-futuristic dystopian-sounding society where nobody has to work anymore. Artificial intelligence does everything, people receive some form of universal income, and we’re free to pursue hobbies and leisure activities. We sit around making pottery and playing pickleball while robots do the heavy lifting.
As someone who already has lots of hobbies, I find this proposition intriguing. Welfare Mahjong Miniaturist Queen life is the life for me. But it also reminded me immediately of Pixar’s 2008 film WALL-E. Remember the humans aboard the spaceship Axiom? Supersized sedentary creatures floating around in motorized chairs, sipping Big Gulps while screens entertain them and machines attend to their every need. They’re so accustomed to technological convenience they’ve practically forgotten how to walk. Touching grass isn’t even an option anymore; scrolling won.
WALL-E came out and satirized consumerism and technological dependence. Eighteen years later, it looks suspiciously like Zuckerberg and Bezos are chuckling in the Muppets balcony with a business plan. Elon Musk has suggested that AI will eventually create a world of abundance in which everyone receives what he calls “universal high income.” Stewart brilliantly skewered the concept during his monologue, wondering how unfettered capitalism would somehow deliver socialism.
But who’s writing those checks? Who decides how much money we get? Wouldn’t the tech billionaires suddenly develop an overwhelming desire to redistribute their wealth? What’s the old saying? Don’t write checks your ass can’t cash? According to a recent Nature article examining the science behind AI extinction fears, Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger estimated the probability of human extinction from AI within the next decade at greater than 10 percent.
And Coxon isn’t simply some disgruntled employee looking for attention. On Monday, he testified before the New York City Council about what he witnessed inside the industry. He explained that automating AI research itself has become a major goal at leading laboratories. Once artificial intelligence develops increasingly sophisticated versions of itself, human oversight becomes complicated.
“At my last job, I was, in some sense, working to automate myself,” Coxon testified. That’s a sentence that should make every employed American uncomfortable. Even the industry’s biggest players are acknowledging the dangers. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called a 10 percent chance of AI-induced human extinction unacceptable, insisting his company wouldn’t take such risks. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has also called for slowing the development of increasingly powerful AI systems. Yet the companies continue competing to build them, driven by financial incentives and the fear that somebody else might get there first. And Trump’s apparent enthusiasm for allowing tech giants to police themselves doesn’t inspire confidence.
I keep returning to WALL-E, particularly the moment when the ship’s captain discovers that human beings once lived on Earth, grew plants, danced and did things for themselves. There’s something depressing about the prospect of a future where humanity becomes a collection of well-fed spectators while machines perform every meaningful task. I’m hardly opposed to technology. We all use AI in our everyday lives whether we realize it or not. The Daily Show parodied Meta’s new “Muse” AI, which looks like a Temu version of the Stay Puft marshmallow villain from Ghostbusters.
Are humans willing to surrender autonomy in exchange for a guaranteed income and unlimited leisure time? Jon Stewart thinks the answer is a resounding “no.” People who like it don’t want to lose it. Since I’ve only earned income from creative works and am a person who doesn’t worry about what I can’t control, I wouldn’t spend time fretting about whether/when AI is going to endgame-end us. I hate climate change more because I hate watching the demise of the planet. Both are examples of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
I’ll keep working: writing, creating miniatures and candles. If the robots eventually take over, I’ll continue to occupy myself aboard the Axiom with those activities.