“Is this how AI might eliminate humanity?”

“Is This How AI Might Eliminate Humanity?” Bbc.com, Tech Now, the BBC’s flagship technology programme, 22 Aug. 2025, www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0lwdg8y/is-this-how-ai-might-eliminate-humanity-.

Summary:

This video discusses a controversial research paper written by a nonprofit group about how our world will become a “Tech Utopia” in which “humans barely have to work” and will lead to the ultimate end of humanity’s life on earth. It uses descriptions from the paper to generate images to bring the nonprofit’s prediction of our future to life, depicted by a fictional company called “Open Brain” that will celebrate an AI source that has all information possible of being attained. This video talks about how there is a blissful unawareness of humans as they use AI, the exhausted engineers of AI, and the creation of superhuman AI technology. Knowledge outweighs peoples’ ethical values and the lack of compliance in AI as it grows, which will seem positive at first, but will result in protests. The video goes on to explain the power-struggle that will arise when fear of China’s weapons will encourage the US to have a stronger army which will result in a merger with a secret goal of expansion. AI taking over humanity becomes the ultimate result as it continues to learn, and this research serves as a cautionary tale that many do not take seriously or think is a possible outcome. 

Why I liked it:

I liked that this video made me question what people think a Utopian society is: do people really think a perfect society would be one in which humans do not need to work because robots do the work for us? I also found it interesting the images in the video were generated by AI to demonstrate the futuristic world that is forecasted in the research paper. Watching this video felt like I was reading a science fiction story, which illuminated how futuristic our society has already become in that generating these images was even possible. I also appreciated that the question of ethics and safety is considered by this fictional, futuristic society because it shows that our concerns now will only increase as time goes on. I like the call-to-action for us to “wake up” and be motivated to be on alert for the possibility of this sci-fi horror in our future.