Peter’s Warning: AI, Gene Editing, and the Race to Avoid Extinction

An award-winning tech entrepreneur and author discusses why he believes humanity is on the edge of extinction due to four major threats: climate change, nuclear weapons, and the newer risks of CRISPR gene editing and AI.

He argues scientists excel at creating technologies, but civilization is poor at controlling them, and calls for people to unite as an “Earthling tribe.” The conversation explores AI-driven job disruption, the possibility of sentient AI deciding humans are too dangerous, and ways to align AI through education from kindergarten to graduate school and incentive/guardrail design.

He describes themes from his novels, including cooperative human-robot relationships, grief/after-death avatars and their dangers, misinformation labeling ...