Humanity could face extinction by 2100 from the malicious use of artificial intelligence or nuclear conflict, according to a new global assessment published by The Lancet — though the experts behind it stress that every threat on their list has, in their words, “a realistic route to act.” The report, from the newly established Lancet Commission on 21st Century Global Threats to Health, identifies 17 major threats to human health and wellbeing over the next 75 years.
How the commission measured danger
The 35-member commission ranked threats by disability-adjusted life years — the years of healthy life lost to sickness, disability and premature death — modeling current and alternative trajectories for each. Two threats stood apart: “Malicious use of AI, including bioweapons, and nuclear conflict with nuclear famine carry risks of extinction in the next 75 years,” the report states. The likelihood remains low, the authors emphasize, but the consequences would be catastrophic: a major nuclear conflict could inject enough particles into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight and trigger famine, while AI could be exploited to engineer biological weapons.
The co-chair of the commission is Professor Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle — giving the assessment a direct Pacific Northwest connection. “Decisions made by leaders today will shape the health and wellbeing of the next generation,” Murray said, a line that lands with particular weight in a state whose research institutions are already working on the problems the report flags, from NASA-funded space biology research at state universities to a shoebox-sized ultraviolet telescope that is extending what ground observatories can see.
The other fifteen threats
The full list of “major catastrophic threats” — each capable of costing more than a billion cumulative healthy years — also includes air pollution, antimicrobial resistance, childhood malnutrition, climate breakdown, conventional conflict, declining overseas aid, high alcohol use, high blood pressure, income inequality, low educational attainment, naturally occurring pandemics, obesity, poor mental health, smoking and unhealthy ageing. The commission’s central argument is that the threats interact and must be addressed together.
The findings are scheduled to be presented at the World Health Summit in Berlin. For readers, the report’s most actionable number may be this: limiting global heating to about 1.8°C rather than letting it reach 4.4°C could prevent 1.89 billion years of healthy life being lost. The extinction scenarios grab the headlines; the arithmetic of prevention is the story underneath. Reporting note: this story was checked against at least two reputable reports or official records before publication, and it will be updated if the responsible authorities, leagues, companies or researchers publish materially new verified information.
