HUMANCOLLAPSE
Estimated time to human collapse caused by AI
50,528days03hrs21min24sec
median 2165  ·  plausible range 2138–2180
205020752100212521502175nowmedian 2165
Collapse risk index
63.00 — 100
Extinction-level outcome, 100 years
7.6%

Anchored to the AI Impacts 2023 expert survey (median 5%), scaled by the current risk index. See methodology.

Risk pillars
Human cognition
63↑ 52

Erosion of independent thinking from mass AI use.

Climate strain
66↑ 59

Datacenter electricity, emissions, and the grid's carbon intensity.

Mitigation
35

Binding regulation and coordination. Reduces the index — never a risk term.

Labor displacement
51↑ 36

Jobs lost to mass automation: layoffs, entry-level gaps, unemployment.

AGI proximity
80

How close transformative AI is: forecasts, markets, benchmarks, compute.

Outcome severity
71↑ 69

How bad it could get: expert extinction estimates and real incidents.

Pillar score, with the value after cascade coupling when interdependence amplifies it. The index is a non-compensatory power mean of the five risk pillars, damped by mitigation.

Live signals
2026-08-29
Manifold AI-extinction marketOutcome severity
Manifold Markets — AI extinction risk
67
2026-08-29
Manifold AGI marketAGI proximity
Manifold Markets — AGI When?
78
2026-08-29
Cognitive offloading of information-seekingHuman cognition
Wikimedia & Stack Exchange APIs — del Rio-Chanona et al., PNAS Nexus (2024)
64
2026-08-29
AI incident rateOutcome severity
arXiv cs.AI — AI-safety research velocity
100
2026-08-29
World unemployment rateLabor displacement
World Bank — world unemployment (ILO modeled estimate)
8
2026-08-29
Grid carbon intensity of new AI loadClimate strain
Our World in Data — carbon intensity of electricity (Ember)
82
2026-08-12
Entry-level displacement gapLabor displacement
Stanford Digital Economy Lab — Canaries in the Coal Mine
48
2026-08-01
Frontier capability benchmarksAGI proximity
Public benchmark leaderboards
80
2026-08-01
Frontier training-compute growthAGI proximity
Epoch AI compute trends
75
2026-08-01
Global regulation & mitigationMitigation
Public regulatory tracker
35
2026-07-28
Metaculus weak-AGI forecastAGI proximity
Metaculus #3479
88
2026-07-28
Metaculus strong-AGI forecastAGI proximity
Metaculus strong AGI
78
2026-07-01
Hyperscaler emissions growthClimate strain
Google & Microsoft environmental reports (2026)
79
2026-06-30
AI-attributed layoff shareLabor displacement
Challenger, Gray & Christmas job-cut reports
46
2026-06-01
Population exposure to generative AIHuman cognition
Reuters Institute Digital News Report
45
2025-04-10
Global datacenter electricity trajectoryClimate strain
IEA — Energy and AI (2025)
30
2023-12-05
Measured skill decline (PISA)Human cognition
OECD PISA 2022 (via Our World in Data)
43
2023-12-01
Expert extinction-risk estimateOutcome severity
AI Impacts 2023 Expert Survey on Progress in AI
55
Critical events
2026-08-12▲ raises risk
Entry-level AI displacement gap reaches 19%
Stanford Digital Economy Lab (ADP payrolls): employment of 22-25-year-olds in AI-exposed occupations trails less-exposed peers by 19 points.
2025-06-10▲ raises risk
MIT: cognitive debt from LLM-assisted writing
EEG study finds up to 55% reduced brain connectivity in LLM users; 83% could not quote their own just-written essay. Preprint.
2025-04-10▲ raises risk
IEA: datacenter electricity to more than double by 2030
Energy and AI report projects 415 TWh (2024) to ~945 TWh (2030), driven by AI — nearly 3% of world electricity.
2024-09-17▲ raises risk
LLMs measurably displace public knowledge sharing
PNAS Nexus quasi-experiment: Stack Overflow activity fell 25% within six months of ChatGPT, across all experience levels.
2024-05-21▼ lowers risk
EU AI Act adopted
First comprehensive binding AI regulation, including rules for general-purpose models.
2024-01-14▲ raises risk
IMF: 40% of global jobs exposed to AI
IMF analysis finds ~40% of global employment (60% in advanced economies) exposed to AI, with about half at risk of negative effects.
2024-01-08▲ raises risk
AI Impacts 2023 Expert Survey published
Median researcher assigns ~5% probability to extinction-level outcomes from advanced AI within 100 years.
2023-12-05▲ raises risk
PISA 2022: unprecedented skill decline
OECD average mathematics falls 15 points vs 2018 (~0.75 school-year), triple any prior cycle change. COVID-confounded; PISA 2025 is the first post-LLM cycle.
2023-05-30▼ lowers risk
Statement on AI Risk
Hundreds of experts, including lab CEOs, sign a one-sentence statement that mitigating AI extinction risk should be a global priority.
2023-03-22▼ lowers risk
Pause Giant AI Experiments open letter
Future of Life Institute letter calling for a 6-month pause on training systems more powerful than GPT-4.
2022-11-30▲ raises risk
ChatGPT released
Mass adoption of generative AI begins; the baseline year for the cognition-pillar offloading measurements.

Index computed 2026-08-29 · updates continuously as new data is collected.