'Doomsday Clock' ticks 4 seconds closer to midnight as unregulated AI and 'mirror life' threaten humanity

The "Doomsday Clock," which reassesses the state of the world annually, is now set at 85 seconds to midnight — the closest it has ever been to heralding a manmade global catastrophe.

Humanity continues to court species-threatening disaster through nuclear brinkmanship, a failure to address climate change, and a hasty rollout of artificial intelligence (AI), according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the organization that updates the Doomsday Clock.

The nonprofit, founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists who were raising the alarm about the threat of nuclear war, said urgent action is necessary to avoid catastrophe in the near future.

"Our current trajectory is unsustainable," they wrote in their report. "National leaders — particularly those in the United States, Russia, and China — must take the lead in finding a path away from the brink."

Nuclear escalation from 'major powers'

The urgency comes as nuclear powers flirt with escalation around the world.

"[C]ompetition among major powers has become a full-blown arms race, as evidenced by increasing numbers of nuclear warheads and platforms in China, and the modernization of nuclear delivery systems in the United States, Russia, and China," the scientists wrote.

The report also decried the lack of international cooperation on disarmament.

"As we publish this statement, the last major agreement limiting the numbers of strategic nuclear weapons deployed by the United States and Russia, New START, is set to expire, ending nearly 60 years of efforts to constrain nuclear competition between the world's two largest nuclear countries," they said. "In addition, the US administration may be considering the resumption of explosive nuclear testing, further accelerating a renewed nuclear arms race."

These escalating conflicts sit against a backdrop of accelerating climate change, which countries have also failed to control. The international response has become "profoundly destructive," according to the Bulletin scientists, who cited a lack of commitment to phasing out fossil fuels globally and attacks by the Trump administration on renewable energy technology.

The threat of AI and 'mirror life'

Continuing a theme from last year's report, the Bulletin also warned of unregulated technologies, particularly the creation of "mirror life" — chemically synthesized life that is molecularly a mirror image of the life that naturally evolved on Earth. The fear is that mirror organisms could displace natural microbes or other organisms and that these life-forms could evade immune systems, leading to deadly pandemics.

AI is another threat, according to the report's authors, both because of its power to amplify disinformation and because of the incorporation of AI into countries' defense sectors.

Fixing these problems does not look easy, and the rise of autocracy globally is undermining efforts to tackle these international crises, the report's authors concluded.

"The current autocratic trend impedes international cooperation, reduces accountability, and acts as a threat accelerant, making dangerous nuclear, climatic, and technological threats all the harder to reverse," they wrote.