apocalypse

Too Long; Didn't ReadArtificial intelligence is rapidly becoming an integral part of modern society. It has the potential to revolutionize nearly every industry and transform our world in extraordinary ways. There is a growing concern about what happens when these intelligent machines malfunction or become malicious. It is essential to keep in mind the risks of AI becoming a menace and take proactive steps to ensure it remains a helpmate and a force for good. Too Long; Didn't ReadArtificial intelligence is rapidly…

Given that Mr Musk did not elaborate how—or when—you get from a promotional clip to an army of more than 8bn robots, this might all smack of science-fiction. But he has waded into a very real debate about the future of work. For certain forms of AI-enabled automation are fast becoming science fact. Since November ChatGPT, an AI conversationalist, has dazzled users with its passable impression of a human interlocutor. Other “generative" AIs have been conjuring up similarly human-like texts, images and sounds…

“There’s so much goodness this kind of tech can engender, so much suffering it can prevent, and then there’s the aspect of how much destruction it can cause and how much can get lost in that process,” says Kim, who was an early employee of Google and has also worked at the United Nations and as an assistant to Paul Graham, cofounder of the Y Combinator startup incubator. “I don’t think we have all the answers. We just need to be very pro-human and give people the critical means to think about this tech.”The temporary…

The Last of Us web series is a post-apocalyptical drama that revolves around a marauding fungus that starts a wave…

Around the midpoint of The Deluge, a character laments how quickly “you wake up and you’re in a bad movie from the future”. It’s an offhand but accurate description of the economic, ecological and technological turmoil in Stephen Markley’s bleak vision of the coming decades. In his alternative 2030s, surveillance capitalism has ended privacy and AI has eroded human agency; financial markets collapse and the political sphere becomes yet more rabid. Above it all looms our inescapable, spiralling climate…

But let’s be honest: Most people, even in the moderate damage zone, won’t survive. Hardly anyone lives or works in nearly windowless reinforced-concrete buildings, nor in the vicinity of a concrete bunker. (Even people at a bank would have to get into the vault to be in the safest place; people in a subway would get the most benefit in a station that’s very deep underground.) Most people live in timber-frame or other less-armored buildings. This shouldn’t be construed as a way to be safe in a nuclear explosion, says Dylan…

Images via Dreamworks and HBO Normally, when faced with a doomsday/apocalyptic situation, the first thing you’d think about is how to survive or where to find resources in order to live. However, this one Twitter user has their priorities set differently if faced with a similar scenario in HBO’s newest series, The Last of Us after they pointed out that an animation classic wouldn’t exist thanks to the apocalypse. Twitter user @TommyStella noticed how the apocalypse in The Last of Us started in 2003 and realized…

It’s a day like any other for Bernie (John Gemberling, whose voice credits include Bob’s Burgers, Big Mouth, and Central Park): toiling at his office job, visiting his stoner besties, mooning over his mega-crush. But as it turns out, this is not any other day: this is the day the robots rebel.And though the robots are deadly, they’re also dorky shit-talkers who take all their personality cues from video games. Can Bernie survive, impress his dream girl, and maybe save the world while he’s at it? Watch the very fun…

It’s inevitable that at some point the world will end. The only question left is whether it will be in a slow, inexorable heat death of the universe, or something a little more active and exciting. Unsurprisingly most sci fi movies tend to explore the second option (although there are some excellent books and short stories such as Asimov’s The Last Question which look at the first). Since it’s my field, we’re going to look at how cyber security failings could cause these apocalypses (apocalypsi?), and which are most…

Is the Great Pyramid of Cholula in Mexico a legacy of an advanced civilization that was wiped out 12,000 years ago? Highly unlikely, say two U of A experts who take issue with how the Netflix series “Ancient Apocalypse” portrays archeology and academia. Credit: Diego Delso via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0 Since the controversial documentary series "Ancient Apocalypse" dropped on Netflix last November, academics and…