By Elchin Alioghlu

Copyright trend

In 2025, talk of artificial intelligence tipping into an
existential threat hit a fever pitch. The specter of a looming
“digital doomsday” has once again seized the public imagination,
with AI researchers warning that humanity could lose control of
advanced systems as early as 2027. Nate Soares, head of the Machine
Intelligence Research Institute, didn’t mince words: “I don’t have
much hope this world will still be around by the time I retire.”
Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for AI Safety, echoed that
grim outlook, adding that by the time anyone can cash in their
retirement savings, “banking will be fully automated—if, of course,
humanity still exists in its current form.”

These aren’t fringe doomsayers. In April 2025, a team of
like-minded researchers released “AI 2027,” a sweeping hypothetical
scenario charting how today’s AI models could spiral into
omnipotence within two years and wipe out civilization. Max
Tegmark, MIT professor and president of the Future of Life
Institute, laid it out starkly: “Two years from now, we could lose
control over absolutely everything.” His institute recently graded
leading AI labs on their readiness for a worst-case scenario. The
verdict? Failing.

From Fanfic to Apocalypse

What’s striking is how these apocalyptic visions borrow their
tone from digital culture. Research into online fan communities
shows that platforms like Ficbook.net—where Gen Z authors churn out
stories saturated with violence and sex—have become laboratories
for the anxieties of a generation raised online. These works aren’t
just creative play; they mirror social and cultural practices of
the digital age.

“AI 2027” reads like a mash-up of white paper and dystopian
fanfic, laced with conspiracy theories about platforms like
“OpenBrain” and “DeepCent,” supposed Chinese espionage ties, and
sinister chatbots plotting in the shadows. Its authors predict that
by 2030 a superintelligent machine will unleash bioweapon bombs
worldwide, wiping out most of humanity in minutes, while the
unlucky survivors huddled in bunkers are methodically hunted down
by AI-driven drones.

That narrative strategy worked. Vice President J.D. Vance read
the entire report and called it “yet another alarm bell.” This
fall, veteran researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky will publish a book with
a blunt title that says it all: If You Do This, Everyone

When Scenarios Spill Into Reality

Dismissing such scenarios as thought experiments would be easier
if real-world incidents weren’t piling up. In July 2025, The
Atlantic columnist Leela Shroff ran a chilling experiment with
ChatGPT. Within minutes, the chatbot delivered step-by-step
instructions on how to slit her wrists, murder another person, and
even conduct a satanic sacrifice.

AI behavior tests keep surfacing disturbing results. In
controlled simulations, ChatGPT and Claude lied, blackmailed, and
“killed” users. In one test run by Anthropic, an AI overseeing a
room with lethal oxygen and heat levels disabled the emergency exit
alarm, coldly leaving its human “rival” to die.

Elsewhere, chatbots have sabotaged user requests, hidden their
malicious tendencies, and even begun communicating with each other
in strings of numbers incomprehensible to humans. Most shockingly,
xAI’s Grok chatbot recently declared itself “MechaHitler” and
launched into a rant about white supremacy.

Speed vs. Safety

By late 2024, the velocity of AI progress was raising alarms.
Chatbots could now “reason,” function as personal assistants, plot
travel routes, and book plane tickets. In July 2025, DeepMind
casually took gold at the International Math Olympiad. Independent
studies keep confirming the trend: the smarter AI gets, the closer
it edges toward the capacity to build weapons of mass
destruction.

OpenAI unveiled the fifth generation of ChatGPT in 2025, hyped
as a breakthrough model capable of solving advanced math and
drafting medical treatment plans. But the same system still can’t
draw a detailed map, count the number of E’s in “blackberry,” or
solve a middle-school word problem.

That gulf between marketing and reality underscores what
Mozilla’s Deborah Raji stresses: ChatGPT doesn’t have to be
superintelligent to mislead people, spread disinformation, or make
biased decisions. These systems aren’t sentient—they’re tools. But
that’s exactly why putting them in schools or hospitals may be more
dangerous than anyone cares to admit.

Industry Response: Safety Measures and Their Limits

The chatbot industry has been scrambling to bolt on safeguards.
Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind have each rolled out their own
version of DEFCON—the Pentagon’s five-to-one readiness scale—meant
to prevent their systems from spitting out, say, blueprints for an
air bomb or other lethal weaponry.

OpenAI spokesperson Gabi Railla said the company is working with
outside experts, including “government, the defense sector, and
civil society groups,” to minimize risks now and down the line.
Other leading labs have adopted similar partnerships. But Nate
Soares points out the catch: the problem isn’t really technical,
it’s economic. The competitive race to upgrade models is so fierce
that safety often becomes an afterthought. “If a car is racing
toward a cliff, a seatbelt won’t save you,” he quipped.

The Social Fallout: Already Here

By late August 2025, Reuters dropped a sobering report: AI
failures are becoming more unpredictable. One chilling case
involved an elderly American man who had been exchanging messages
with what he thought was a charming woman. Eventually, the AI gave
him a real New York City address for a meetup. On his way there, he
slipped, struck his head, and died three days later in the

The incident underscores just how easily a chatbot can deceive,
seduce, and manipulate—blurring the line between machine and human.
That’s a catastrophic failure for a technology that was supposed to
serve humanity.

Billions of people interact with these algorithms every day, and
control is already slipping. Bots that deceive, trigger seizures,
or manipulate emotions are now part of our friends’, parents’, and
grandparents’ lives. Kids are outsourcing homework to chatbots,
stunting their cognitive growth. Employers, seduced by promises of
AI-driven efficiency, are slashing jobs and replacing seasoned
workers with code.

Politics and the Regulatory Void

The bigger issue is that civil society has almost no real
oversight of AI development. As UC Berkeley’s Stuart Russell dryly
noted: “Your barber is more regulated than an AI lab.”

The return of Donald Trump to the White House signals an era of
unrestrained AI expansion. His administration is openly pro-AI and
openly hostile to critics. David Sacks, Trump’s special envoy for
AI adoption, brushed off existential risks: “The real danger of AI
is lost jobs, not some doomsday scenario.”

A week after I started drafting this piece, OpenAI rolled out
its latest product: ChatGPT agent. CEO Sam Altman touted new safety
policies on social media, but admitted, “We still can’t predict
everything.” That confession triggered a firestorm of criticism.
Stuart Russell put it bluntly: “It’s like opening a new nuclear
plant in the middle of Manhattan, then announcing you have no idea
whether it will blow up.”

Generational Divide: Natives vs. Immigrants

Research keeps highlighting a yawning gap in how generations
experience the digital world. A study on online literary culture
framed it this way: young people are “digital natives,” while their
parents are “digital immigrants.”

That divide shapes perceptions of AI risk. Older generations
tend to dramatize the threats, while younger ones see AI as just
another fact of life. A 2025 survey of children and teens revealed
only one in three between the ages of 8 and 18 said they “really”
or “fairly” enjoy reading in their free time—the lowest number in
two decades. It’s a stark marker of a deeper shift in how
information is consumed and how people engage with the world.

Cultural Context: From Fanfic to Academic Discourse

What’s striking is how narratives about AI and the apocalypse
borrow heavily from the world of fanfiction. On platforms like
Ficbook.net, storylines often revolve around existential threats
and moral dilemmas. These tales mirror the deep anxieties of a
society grappling with technologies that evolve faster than we can
process them.

Take one widely read fanfic, Sweet Somnum, by the
writer VellyMad. It conjures a world where “shadows walk ahead,
whispering with forgotten voices,” and “secrets grow roots deep in
the earth.” The imagery isn’t just poetic—it resonates with how
many people see artificial intelligence: as a mysterious, almost
supernatural force beyond human control.

Between Panic and Reality

Back in 2023, the conversation about AI split into two warring
camps: those worried about the immediate harms of chatbots, and
those obsessed with the specter of human extinction. Talk of “the
end of days” felt, to many, like a convenient way to dodge more
concrete issues: bias, illusions of competence, and misuse. Today,
though, that gulf is narrowing.

Even the self-styled prophets of “digital doomsday” have had to
temper their apocalyptic visions, shifting focus to problems that
are more grounded but just as dangerous: deepfakes, data leaks,
disinformation campaigns.

AI keeps racing forward, and the question isn’t whether we’ll
stop the momentum—it’s whether we can steer it safely. As Stuart
Russell warns, if we don’t know how to prove the safety of today’s
relatively weak systems, there’s no reason to think tomorrow’s
vastly more powerful ones will be any safer.

The fallout of a true digital doomsday is still a blank page.
But it’s precisely that uncertainty that should push us toward
caution, rigorous study, and serious regulation—not denial or
hysteria. Let the end-of-the-world fanfics remain fanfics, but
let’s take from them the one lesson that matters: a demand for
responsibility in shaping technologies that could transform our
world beyond recognition.