The "Doomsday clock" is not really a clock - no longer much about nukes - almost no positive framing which psychologists say drives action - suggested positive version: "shoots for future growth"
For a first overview read the section titles and look at the graphics. You can also skip to the Contents or on a laptop click on the column of horzontal dashes to the left of the page to show the contents at any time.
For positive version skip to: Positive version: shoots for future growth - many extraordinarily positive things happening today
Everyone please ignore the Doomsday Clock. The only thing I see new is bird flu which WHO say has no increased risk from previous years, it could easily account for that extra second. This clock does absolutely nothing to the world. It makes no difference if they set it to 1 second to midnight or midnight itself or to 1000 years to midnight.
Psychologists says we need to focus on true positive stories of what’s going well to motivate and inspire people to action. They call these positive framings - for maximum engagement we need three supportive positive framing for each threat.
Positive framing here
The Doomsday Clock statement for 2025 goes the other way - it has only half a sentence out of 34 that would count as positive. So its ratio is very much in the other direction of overwhelmingly negative framing.
This approach will drive inaction, the opposite of what they need.
Purple line: Nukes only (illustrative)
Black line: Chatbots, AI, COVID, Deepfake, climate, … + bird flu
WHO say no change in risk for bird flu from previous years.
Not official. Not a clock. Not a doomsday. Not a time. A metaphor but for what? Means nothing.
For action we need focus on positives and positive framing.
Used to mean more.
Just a graphic.
Not 1 second closer to global warming or bird flu.
Set it to midnight? Nothing happens.
Graphic from here: PRESS RELEASE: Closer than ever: It is now 89 seconds to midnight
The clock is just a graphic by graphic designers. They could put it at midnight or at 10 minutes AFTER midnight. Nothing would happen except everyone would talk about how silly they are.
It is not a clock, not about time, not about doomsday, it is a metaphor but with so many things now added which work in so many different ways it is increasingly unclear what it is supposed to be a metaphor of and now is just rather meaningless. It's never been official in any way not an official organization like the IPCC and it has no scientific methodology to it.
Their aim is to encourage politicians to work to solve our problems. But the number is increasingly meaningless.
It used to be only about nukes, but no longer is.
It's now just a rag bag of whatever they choose to add to it.
AI, deep fake, climate change, pandemics, each time they add new things.
There is no scientific method to it.
Before, when it was about nukes it was their area of some level of expertise. But the bulletin of Atomic Scientists has no expertise on AI or pandemics or global warming.
And it never made sense as a clock, was just a symbol.
But it is especially bizarre to say we are 89 seconds away from global warming or deep fake or bird flu. Or that somehow it makes a difference if we are 89 seconds away from global warming instead of 90 seconds.
Also you can no longer compare the clock time for any year with any previous year as the reasoning was different because they keep adding new things.
Contents
Positive version: shoots for future growth - many extraordinarily positive things happening today
Chatbots - just autocomplete and nothing there understands anything
Only half of one sentence is positive out of 34 sentences - impressive growth in solar and wind energy - and the other half sentence fails basic fact check - countries are coming together to an extraordinary degree to halt warming
This year had especially extreme negative framing.
Counting the postiives in this year’s statement, 2025, I find only half a sentence out of 34 sentences or a ratio of 68 : 1 of negative to positive sentences.
QUOTE (ONLY POSITIVE HALF IS TRUE) Growth in solar and wind energy has been impressive but remains insufficient to stabilize the climate.
. PRESS RELEASE: Closer than ever: It is now 89 seconds to midnight
That is the one half sentence that’s positive. And the negative half of it is FALSE.
Our net zero pledges are now sufficient for 1.7 C if countries keep to them, realistic pledges that get easier to do as a result of the renewables growth.
And the COP28 pledge to triple renewables by 2030 is very achievable and can get us back on track to 1.5 C:
This is NOT going to help with inspiring people to action and this is why it comes across as so gloomy.
As with that statement, they don't check their facts and frequently fail fact check.
No mention of the ceasefires in Gaza Strip or Lebanon or the ending of Assad’s regime - only of the Ukraine war because it still continues
On wars they only mention the Ukraine war and don’t talk about the ceasefires in Gaza Strip, Lebanon and the overthrow of the Assad regime.
All they say on those is
QUOTE (FALSE) Conflict in the Middle East threatens to spiral out of control into a wider war without warning.
. PRESS RELEASE: Closer than ever: It is now 89 seconds to midnight
How does that make sense? It doesn’t.
Iran is very much diminished since their last update in 2024. In a single raid Israel destroyed ALL their air defences
Assad’s regime in Syria has been overthrown with Syria well on the path to a peaceful transition under HTS who unusually don’t want to stay in power at the end of the process.
All the military leaders of Hamas in Gaza Strip were killed
The Gaza Strip ceasefire holds
Hezbollah no longer exists as an effective fighting force
The Lebanon ceasefire holds and the new prime minister of Lebanon is committed to ending Hezbollahs’ accesss to military putting all military in charge of the Lebanese government - whether he succeeds or not this has to be a far safer Lebanon
Russian no longer has a presence in Syria or anywhere in the Middle East and has no sea port any more in Tartus base or an airbase - they have withdrawn all their military equipment now from Tartus port
Don’t mention how Russia responded to defeat in Syria - “Russia completed its mission”
They don’t mention that
Russia has shown it can be beaten with it smajor defeat in Syria - unable to support Assad’s regime any more and they lost their Tartus port, their only base on the Mediterranean and only base for ships outside the former Soviet Union.
Now, Russia’s southernmost port to access the Atlantic, Mediterranean or the Red Sea etc is Kaliningrad on the Baltic sea.
We see from this the typical Kremlin response to losing. They told the Russian people that their mission in Syria was completed some time ago.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov put it like this:
"A while ago, Russia helped the Syrian Arab Republic in combating terrorists and ensuring stability when the situation posed a threat to the entire region. We put in significant effort toward that goal. Russia completed its mission at that point,"
Russia completed its mission in Syria some time ago — Kremlin
That gives an idea of how Russian media would cover the story if Putin fails in his attempt to add Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
Don’t explain how weak Russia has proven to be in Ukraine or that Zelensky thinks peace will come faster with Trump
In Ukraine:
Russia has lost a third of its Black Sea fleet
Russia has major economic problems with its oil refineries frequently hit by Ukrainian long distance drone attacks which it can apparently do nothing about - these oil refineries are the main source of funding for the russian military as well as a source of refined oil for the miltiary
This forces Russia to export crude rather than refined oil at far less profit for its military
It’s southernmost port for the Pacific is Vladivostok. It has no foreign ports for its warships. It has no foreign air bases outside the former Soviet Union either.
Its ships in the Black Sea can’t leave it while the Ukraine war continues.
They also don’t mention that Zelensky sees potential for a faster end to the Ukraine war under Trump.
They share the mistaken view that Putin acts out of his emotions
QUOTE (FALSE) In regard to nuclear risk, the war in Ukraine, now in its third year, looms over the world; the conflict could become nuclear at any moment because of a rash decision or through accident or miscalculation.
. PRESS RELEASE: Closer than ever: It is now 89 seconds to midnight
That is all they say. Not only do they not expand on this - they don’t mention this in their detailed section on nuclear risk. This doesn’t even discuss about rash decisions or accidents or miscalculations.
However this is a common popular misperception.
Numerous precautions to prevent mistakes and Putin is as keen as anyone to make sure there is no mistake
First on mistakes, this is the only reason we had a risk of nukes at the height of cold war in the Cuban missile crisis.
Neither the US or the Soviet Union were going to attack each other deliberately but Russia came close to using a nuke by mistake.
This is NOT going to happen today because of numerous measures everyone has put in place to stop something like that happening today.
There is no way that NATO makes a rash decision to attack Russia with nukes. For anyone worried about Trump doing that, The answer is the general would say he can’t proceed with the order and call on his lawyers if pressed further on the matter.
In that situation a general who got that order would be obligated to remind the president of the 4 Basic Principles of the Law of Armed Conflict , on the remote chance he or she receives such an order.
This blog post is based on the 2017 US Senate hearing which you can find with an auto-generated transcript on C-SPAN here: : Authority to Order the Use of Nuclear Weapons (Immediately following Business Meeting) | United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
For the actual process including the nuclear football etc see:
BLOG: Trump or any other president can’t launch a nuke even if he were to go mad
Though Putin has suspended the New START nuclear arms agreement, he continues to comply with its most important provision, to limit the number of nukes.
He also continues to make sure there is no possibility of the US making a mistake.
When he fired the Oreshnik at Lviv he gave the US 30 minutes of warning to avoid any risk of misunderstanding.
. Russia warned US 30 minutes before launching Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile
Russia like the US has numerous precautions to make sure it won’t use a nuke by mistake. The main one is that it has humans in the loop at every stage. See:
BLOG: Trump or any other president can’t launch a nuke even if he were to go mad
In reality Putin is extraordinarily, almost pathalogically averse to anything with the slightest risk to his regime - his invasion of Ukraine is an example of careful calculated planning that went wrong not an emotional decision
So that leaves Putin making a rash decision. But he like everyone else knows that nukes will only make his situation worse. However bad his situation for the health of Putin’s regime, it will get far worse if he uses nuke.
Putin is extraordinarily averse to taking the minutest risk to his regime.
The main reason people think Putin is mad is because he attacked Ukraine. The popular press often FALSELY present this as an emotional decision. Here is my fact check of a very mistaken article by the BBC.
What they miss is that Putin based his decision on his previous invasion of Crimea in 2014. He took over Crimea almost without a fight.
He thought he could do the same with Ukraine. According to authors with access to classified information, writing for RUSI, who were cleared to use it for their research, we now know that Putin believed
(FALSE) that Zelensky was an oppressor and the people of Ukraine would welcome him being overthrown
[He is a very popular president, Russian speaking and born in the Russian speaking part of Ukraine wherehe won with a landslide](FALSE) that he could set up an airbridge to Hostomel airport on day 1 and have his tanks drive into Kyiv on day 2 and take over goverment - and take over all of Ukraine by day 10
(FALSE) that the Ukrainians would welcome the Russian tanks with flowers and within a week his job would just be mopping up resistance
Even with all these false beliefs he was extraordinarily cautious. He had already decided to invade in early spring 2021. But instead of invading then, when Ukraine was far weaker than it was in 2022 and could have been taken completely by surprise, he did a large military exercise. The purpose of this was
To test the reactions of the West and Ukraine - the West did nothing to help Ukraine
To put equipment in place for the invasion later on.
Early spring is the worst possible time of year for an invasion in Ukraine because the ground gets so wet that the fields turn into quagmires so deep they can sink a tank up to the turret. That is why his tanks had to stay on the roads in Ukraine in spring 2022.
The best time is late spring to early summer. when the land dries out. So - you’d expect he’d do the actual invasion just a few months later. But no. Putin hadn’t got enough information yet. Instead of invading he spent the summer of 2021 ordering his spies to gather information about Ukraine and putting the last touches to his plans.
He finally reached the point of 100% certainty by spring 2022, again the worst possible time for an invasion. But that didn’t matter to Putin as he expected to have control of the Ukrainian government by day 2. Everything else was just a distraction.
However Latvia and Lithuania gave Ukraine Stinger ground to air shoulder mounted missiles to shoot down low flying helicopters and fighter jets just before the invasion. Ukraine had had a year to prepare for an invasion. Two things happened that made Putin’s plan impossible.
The Ukrainians shot down two of the helicopters that were supposed to establish the land bridge by flying low through the Dnipro river from Belarus
Hostomel airport was defended by a small group of not very well trained officers and soldiers. The main thing is they didn’t run away as Putin expected. They destroyed one of the helicopters that tried to land on the airport, and blew up things that covered it in debris making it temporarily unusable
This gave Ukraine enough time to get more soldiers to Hostomel airport and they were able to hold it for a vital few days time to prepare Kyiv against the Russians.
At this point Putin’s plan was shot to shreds. The remarkable thing is he had no plan B. All the rest is improvising a plan B for the failure of the original plan which he was so sure would succeed.
For details see:
This is one of numerous examples in the war that show up Putin as a man who is
extraordinarily, almost pathologically averse to taking any risks with the health of his regime
won’t move until he is 100% sure he will succeed.
the flip side of that is he doesn’t plan for failure, doesn’t have a plan B.
We saw that with the Kursk incursion
First time any country has occupied any territory of the Russian federation or Soviet Union since WW2
Putin has no plan b for this - any competent military leader would expect something to go wrong at some point in the war and have a contingency force in reserve of a few tens of thousands or soldiesr. Not Putin
So what does risk averse Putin do faced with this unexpected event?
Putin continues to send almost every soldier he can recruit to Donbas instead of Kursk oblast
Uses propaganda to assure the Russians nothing is happening
Has two months of infighting in the Kremlin to find people to blame and decide who should be in charge of the counteroffensive in Kursk
Finally in October
Putin still hasn’t got enough spare Russian soldiers for a counteroffensive
He comes to an agreement with North Korea of all plasces to supply 10,000 extra soldiers that he can’t find in his army of over a million fighting in Ukraine.
As of January 2025, Ukraine still has control of Sudzha city in Kursk oblast and the North Koreans turned out to be ineffective fighters.
That is what Putin is like.
So why does he bluff?
To get Ukraine’s allies to hold back on giving Ukraine the equipment it needs to defend itself, both defensive equipment and counterstrike equipment against military targets
So ask yourself would risk averse Putin use a nuke? No, that makes no sense whatsoever.
Ukraine’s allies would no longer have any restraints and would immediately give Ukraine everything it’s ever asked for and more.
China and India would have to condemn Russia and join in with severe sanctions leaving Russia without major trading partners
The Russian people would freak out
NATO wouldn’t likely use nukes back but their top priority would be to do everything they can to stop Putin launching more nukes including secret ops, sleeper agents, precision military strikes deep in Russia and so on.
Also it’s important to see the asymmetry here
There is no risk to the Russian Federation
Putin can end the war tomorrow - all that happens is he doesn’t get to add Ukraine to the Russian Federation
Ukraine is defending itself against an invader that wants to take over its entire country
So - Putin can end this war and he will if Ukraine gets enough leverage.
And the same thing applies to Putin as to every military leader with nukes
Nukes protect your country so long as you never use them
Whatever your situatoin, you make it far worse for yourself if you use nukes.
This is what they mean when they say a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
It is not an agreement or treaty. It is just recognizing that any country that uses nukes only makes things worse for itself. It loses even if the other country loses too:
Here is the complete statement:
full text here
That is
not a concession.
not a promise or a treaty.
It is just
a statement of a self evident truth that all agree is true.
Putin could break a treaty or a concession. But he can’t change the truth of his situation that a nuclear war can’t be won and must never be fought.
This goes back to US president Ronald Reagen, first to state it really clearly.
Text on graphic: “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”
Not a treaty or agreement or promise.
A statement of a self evident truth.
China, Russia, UK, France, USA, they all agree this is a self evident truth.
Graphic shows screenshot from video at 39:25
These videos I did help many scared people. This is a first draft. I just did it while out for a walk and it gets cut off at the end so I added a second video, and that’s also why I’m not talking to camera.
First video:
Second video:
As I explain in that video, we can look at what our governments tell us as an easy way to see we can’t really be at significant risk of a world war today. It’s not about looking at their political bluffs or the messaging to seem tough to other politicians. We need to look at what our governments advise their own citizens to do.
When I was a child every house in the UK got a booklet through the post "Protect and Survive" on how to survive a nuclear war. A booklet like this potentially can save millions of lives if we ever really did risk a nuclear war.
If there was a real risk we would all know this advice. However, only older citizens know what to do. Because there IS NO REAL WORLD WAR RISK.
.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
You do NOT see these instructions on the news because there IS NO REAL WORLD WAR RISK
We were ALL sent this in the cold war.
NOBODY is sent it today.
Our governments do NOT assess ANY risk of a world war.
These instructions would save millions of lives in a nuclear war.
If you are outside the epicenter and stay away from the heavy dust that falls from the sky you don't get radiation sickness.
Radioactivity is mostly gone in 2 days, most of what's left in weeks.
When I was a child we all read this and knew what to do.
Now almost nobody knows except older people because we DON'T NEED TO KNOW.
Because there is NO LONGER ANY REAL RISK OF A NUCLEAR WAR.
It's bluffs, clickbait, sensationalism and exaggerations.
Graphic from: Protect and survive : this booklet tells you how to make your home and your family as safe as possible under nuclear attack
We didn’t panic in the Cold War. We knew there was a risk and we knew what to do.
There is no reason to suppose people would panic today either.
The simple instructions in books like that would save millions of lives if there ever was a world war.
So our governments are not keeping it secret to prevent panic. Indeed this make sno sense as a way to prevent panic - to hype up the risk of a nuclear war and never ezplain the measures you can use to protect ourselves.
So why don’t we get these instructions today? Because there is no risk. It’s also clear that the journalists with their click bait articles and the generals, world leaders etc are not serious either when they talk about a world war or nukes. Or they also would tell us how to protect ourselves as top priority.
For more on this, if you worry about a world war please see my:
Why we do NOT risk a world war from: Ukraine, the Middle East, China, North Korea, or anywhere else in the world - next to impossible - and longer term are headed for a future without any war
Bird flu - main new thing since 2024 - has no change in the risk of a pandemic - just more publicity - according to WHO bulletins
The main new thing I notice since last year is that they added bird flu, maybe thats the reason for that extra second.
But with every weekly bulletin, the WHO continue to say they see no increased risk of bird flu.
They say the situation is the same in that respect as it has been for many years.
A bird flu pandemic is only foreseeable in the sense that we are sure to have flu pandemics in the future and some flu pandemics originate in bird flu.
But we would now spot it far faster and we have many tools we can use at a far earlier stage than previous pandemics. And there is no reason to expect a bird flu or any flu pandemic in any particular future year. No sign of one at present.
Falsely extreme negative framing gives people no direction to aim for and nothing to look up to - need positive examples to emulate by way of people, countries or communities
This is what psychologists call negative framing. It is a natural thing for activists to do instinctively but it is NOT the optimal approach if you want positive action.
It doesn’t give us a direction. It doesn’t inspire most people. It just inspires some people to protest and ask for action - but most people get depressed and give up.
Instead for the maximum of action we need to focus on what is working and hte positive things going on in the world. And there are many of those. That then inspires others to emulate the people, countries, organizations, communities that they see as at the forefront of positive action and doing positive things themselves.
We have many huge positives on global warming for instance, and on protecting biodiversity in the last several years, they will just ignore.
If the clock focused on nuclear war it should be moved much further back than in the cold war or retired altogether
They now mention so many things including:
Chatbots (new to this edition of the clock) and AI
Deep fakes
Climate change
COVID, pandemics, and genetic engineering
Although there is no calculation method, what would be the point in including those things if they didn’t change the position of the hand? So it seems reasonable to assume that if they had stuck to the original meaning of just a clock for nuclear war it would be much further from midnight.
The ten minutes shown in the graphic for nukes only is just for illustrative purposes, since there is no calculation method we can’t work out what it would be without all the other things they added.,
However we can surely conclude that the only way it stays at 90 seconds is because they keep adding new things. This time the main new thing is chatbots. They don’t do any breakdown to say how many seconds correspond to each of the things they mention. But surely the chatbots have an effect on the time, if only a few seconds, or why would they mention them in their assessment?
US intelligence have said over and over that they see no need to change their nuclear defence posture and see no change on Russia’s side either.
And as I said in the last section - nuclear war was only possible by mistake even at the height of the cold war. Since we have worked so hard to eliminate even the smallest chance of a misunderstanding or mistake with nukes, my personal view isi that the Doomsday Clock should be retired as an indicastor of nuclear war risk. It already accomplished that purpose.
According to Hans Blix, former head of the IAEA, and chair of commission on weapons of mass destruction - we can be far more ambitious and aim to end all wars and remove almost all missiles in future decades not just nukes
Of course we do want to reduce nukes. We want a nuclear weapon free world. But our ambition can be far higher than that. We should aim for a missile-free or almost missile-free world.
That is the vision of Hans Blix, a former nuclear weapons inspector, former head of the IAEA and chair of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission.
He believes it is feasible to end wars completely perhaps as soon as the end of this century or earlier.
See the end of my:
Why we do NOT risk a world war from: Ukraine, the Middle East, China, North Korea, or anywhere else in the world - next to impossible - and longer term are headed for a future without any war
Positive version: shoots for future growth - many extraordinarily positive things happening today
They always focus on the negative things going on. But what if they focused on the positives? I had this idea of a “Shoots for future growth” as a positive version of the Doomsday Clock
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Shoots for future growth:
Assad's regime overthrown, and prisoners freed.
Lets Syria reinvent itself and refugees return.
Gaza Strip ceasefire holds and refugees return to Gaza city.Solar panel prices fell almost 10-fold in a decade
Battery prices fell 33-fold since 1991 opening door to electric cars and shorthaul electric plane flights.
- China's CO2 emissions peaked
- IPBES pledges for 30% of land inland waters,
coast and deep sea managed sustainably by 2030
- Huge advances in vaccines and therapeutics
- Great green wall to reverse desertification south of the Sahara Desert well underway.
- Iberian lynx makes remarkable comeback and many other conservation successes.
- Deforestation rates falling in Brazil under Lula
...
Here are some of the things the graphic covers:
Nearly 10-fold reducetion in price of electricity from solar from 2009 to 2019
See: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast
They continue to fall in price since then.
97% reduction in price of batteries from 1991 to 2018.
QUOTE STARTS
Let’s put this price decline in perspective:
The popular Nissan Leaf electric car – which is also one of the most affordable models – has a 40 kWh battery. At our 2018 price, the battery costs around $7,300. Imagine trying to buy the same model in 1991: the battery alone would cost $300,000.
Or take the Tesla Model S 75D, which has a 75 kWh battery. In 2018 the battery costs around $13,600; in 1991, it would have been $564,000. More than half a million dollars for a car battery.
This shows how important these price reductions are for decarbonizing not only our electricity grids but our transport systems too.
. The price of batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades
Reduction in deforestation in Brazil:
. Amazon deforestation in Brazil plunges 31% to lowest level in 9 years
Iberian Lynx no longer endangered.
In 2001, there were only 62 individuals left making it critically endangered to 648 mature individuals but now more than 2000, adults and juveniles in the wild in Iberia and Portugal. It now counts as only vulnerable.
Bhutan’s white bellied heron in early stages of being saved from extinction with captive breeding.
See: . Soaring success for the white-bellied heron
Forestry England: Nature success stories of 2024
On the Great Green Wall.
Which of these graphics make you more inspired to action? The Doomsday Clock or the “shoots for future growth”?
You can see the power of positive framing here.
Trumps term will likely see the large-scale use of electric planes for internal transport in the USA - with Florida one of the pioneers
A small company UrbanLink in Florida also is a pioneer in renewables, in all electric aviation. They have ordered 10 planes from Eviation which is one of the leaders in the current race globally to the first commercial short flight all electric planes.
Electric planes have huge potential because they cost far less to run and they are now feasible on short haul flights.
I talk about this in my blog:
BLOG: Rising to the challenge of zero emissions aviation
This is a change that will likely happen within Trump’s term, the first all electric short haul passenger flights in the USA and once it starts it likely will spread fast because the USA is a perfect place for this, with many people doing short-haul flights because of the large distances between urban communities. The range is currently 550 miles for the first one to likely see service, the Alice plane from Eviation. That range will increase as the technology improves. Alice can recharge in 30 minutes so it doesn’t have a major turn-around time.
QUOTE STARTS
Eviation Aircraft, the innovative company behind developing the world’s first all-electric aircraft, Alice, has announced a new partnership with South Florida-based UrbanLink Air Mobility.
This collaboration involves a commitment to provide 10 Alice commuter aircraft to UrbanLink, signifying a major advancement in the field of Advanced Air Mobility.
The deal will also explore an option to acquire an additional ten planes.
The new aircraft will support UrbanLink’s commitment to developing an all-electric fleet of aircraft, marine craft, and ground vehicles to provide end-to-end zero-emission transportation.
Operating out of its hub cities of Miami, Los Angeles, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, UrbanLink will deploy Alice as part of its urban mobility solutions.
With orders totaling more than US$ 5 billion, the all-electric Alice heralds a new era of sustainable air travel.
Alice’s 9-seat commuter and cargo versions are designed to delight customers and passengers with innovative technology and beautiful design while also providing carbon-free and cost-effective point-to-point travel.
. World’s 1st all-electric planes to fly in US, 505-mile range on 30-min charge
Alice’s first flight was two years ago.
The manufacturing is based in Seattle.
287 mph half the speed of a Boeing 747 and range about 550 miles.
plan to increase to a 20 to 40 seat passenger aircraft like a commuter aircraft.
Ideally suited for moving packages in late evening / early morning for FedEx / DHL.
I talk about these developments in my
BLOG: Rising to the challenge of zero emissions aviation
See:
Cover so many things they can’t be experts in them all
They are not expert in these things, they cover so many things they know nothing about. Used to be about nukes and the time set by people with some expertise on the topic. Now it is about whatever they want to add every year and it is done by non experts who make numerous mistakes.
It is not a time, not a clock, not about doomsday. It used to be a metaphorical clock to help prevent disasters but increasingly a lot of it is not about anything sensible at all but just lots of mistaken statements that failed fact check used by activists to try to influence governments.
Climate change - much positive going on
The section about climate change was quite positive too. We are actually doing pretty well. Though much still to do. They talked about the pledge in COP28 to triple renewables by 2030.
Commit to work together to triple the world’s installed renewable energy generation capacity to at least 11,000 GW by 2030, taking into consideration different starting points and national circumstances.
Commit to work together in order to collectively double the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements from around 2% to over 4% every year until 2030.
Commit to put the principle of energy efficiency as the "first fuel” at the core of policymaking, planning, and major investment decisions.
They didn’t say there was any risk of sudden warming glad to hear that. We can't have sudden warming
Actually we are headed to below 2 C with realistic pledges that countries can achieve and the top emitters all have a history of equalling or exceeding their pledges - except the USA of course it depends on the president but they are already with falling emissions.
With the USA the inflation reduction act actually greatly benefits Republican states even though it was passed by only democrat votes
So it will surely remain in place no matter who the president.
BLOG: Great, U.S. senate have now passed the U.S. Climate bill (the inflation reduction act) :)
Actually a warmer Earth is slightly more habitable for humans. The world is more habitable for humans than during the ice ages rather obviously and continues to be more habitable in the sense for instance of a larger area suitable for agriculture as the colder northern areas open up to cultivation of small grains like wheat and oats.
It is the speed is the issue not the end climate.
We can achieve growth in everything we value and are increasingly following that path.
Protecting nature and nature services is an important part of that and we are doing that too.
Chatbots - just autocomplete and nothing there understands anything
As expected it had a big section about chatbots such as ChatGPT or Bing Chat.
They are collectively called chatbots becaues they are bots and they chat with you.
But have no understanding and are just auto completing what you say. One of the AI researchers who worked on the chatbots calls them a “stochastic parrot” i.e. a kind of randomised parrot.
It was quite a big tech news story last year and I had to do lots of debunks to help scared people. These are most of them:
BLOG: No Ameca is not self aware - it will say whatever you train it to say
To give an idea of what they are like, Bing Chat is one of the easiest to use and you can go and ask it for recipes or directions to go somewhere or ask it questions or ask it to write a short story or a poem or to make a graphic of something.
E.g. I use it for fun images
I also use it for shortening titles. People find it useful for many things.
It's quite fun and it can be quite helpful if used carefully, but it doesn't understand anything and sometimes gets things completely mixed up and hopelessly wrong.
The art it produces won't win any competitions but it is quite useful if you want a fun illustration to help scared people.
Machine learning can be useful for creative work and it’s getting better. But we’ve had this for decades in music, also in fractal art. They will enhance not replace creativity.
So far they seem to be pretty rubbish at generating sensible story lines.
Some people inspired by movies and science fiction claim that future software similar to these chatbots will somehow want or conspire to take over the world and kill people .
People with a vivid sense of imagination and not well grounded in what is actually happening.
There is nothing there understands or knows anything. It is ust like autocomplete on your phone.
And we are not getting anywhere near to being able to do anything like that. It seems to be a really tough problem to have a robot that understands anything and personally I think it may be impossible that what we do isn't something that can be done in code or scripted.
But if it ever is, why would a robot want to harm humans?
Asimov was the first science fiction author to write about robots that are designed to be safe to use.
He said just as we have handles on knives to protect ourselves, if we have artificial intelligence that can really understand we'll make sure it is safe.
Asimov put it like this for his science fiction:
QUOTE STARTS
One of the stock plots of science fiction was that of the invention of a robot—usually pictured as a creature of metal, without soul or emotion. Under the influence of the well-known deeds and ultimate fate of Frankenstein and Rossum, there seemed only one change to be rung on this plot.—Robots were created and destroyed their creator; robots were created and destroyed their creator; robots were created and destroyed their creator—
In the 1930s I became a science fiction reader, and I quickly grew tired of this dull hundred-times-told tale. As a person interested in science, I resented the purely Faustian interpretation of science.
As a machine, a robot will surely be designed for safety, as far as possible. If robots are so advanced that they can mimic the thought processes of human beings, then surely the nature of those thought processes will be designed by human engineers and built-in safeguards will be added. The safety may not be perfect (what is?), but it will be as complete as men can make it.
With all this in mind I began, in 1940, to write robot stories of my own—but robot stories of a new variety. Never, never, was one of my robots to turn stupidly on his creator for no purpose but to demonstrate, for one more weary time, the crime and punishment of Faust. Nonsense! My robots were machines designed by engineers, not pseudo-men created by blasphemers. My robots reacted along the rational lines that existed in their "brains" from the moment of construction.
Faust is from a german story about a man who makes a pact with the devil
QUOTE Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust ( c. 1480–1540). The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.
But there is no devil here, they are machines and Asimov reasoned if we ever do have machines that we can design able to mimic thought processes of humans they will be designed for safety.
For more about this see my:
BLOG: Why we don’t need to worry about artificial intelligence
And if we ever do get true understanding, if we can make a program able to understand truth, why not also be able to program it to be superwise and supercompassionate and super kind?
It might well be anyway automatically
According to some philosophical ideas true understanding brings along with it wisdom.
But personally I think true understanding may be impossible with algorithms. I think it may be non computable, non algorithmic for some mathematical reasons
If we really can design super intelligence somehow then we'd want it to be superwise and why wouldn't it be?
If it can’t be programmed, and is like us, we would be like the parents to an AI. Or if it can be programmed it will be designed safe just as we do with other engineering.
People just make stuff up from their fantasy. Because there is nothing real to go on.
We have nothing even remotely resembling true intelligence.
If we could have superintelligence then why not superwise?
Why malevolent? There is no motive for that.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy talks about the Kantian idea that higher levels of rationality would go along with a better understanding of how to act morally:
QUOTE The argument from superintelligence to risk requires the assumption that superintelligence does not imply benevolence—contrary to Kantian traditions in ethics that have argued higher levels of rationality or intelligence would go along with a better understanding of what is moral and better ability to act morally Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
We'd surely have superwise, supercompassionate superintelligence if it is possible to have understanding. A superwise AI would surely run circles around supermoronic superdumb artificial intelligence. But the superwise AI would likely have rights and need protection from us, far more so than us need protection from it.
But all that is currently science fantasy.
Personally I think all that may be impossible using scripts / computer code for mathematical reasons There is no way to use finite scripts and algorithms to encode a true understanding of maths. So we are left with a dilemma. Either human mathematicians don't understand maths, or what human mathematicians do is not computable, can't be scripted.
Several human mathematicians like Godel and Penrose, who believe for many good reasons that they do understand maths, conclude that no script or algorithm can fully capture truth, and so can never truly understand maths.
If so a chatbot can never truly understand maths. We can get simple calculators to do maths. But there is nothing in a calculator that knows what it is displaying or what a number is.
In the same way computers may always be tools. Like calculators displaying things for us that we understand but nothing there that understands what it is displaying to us.
That is my belief though I can't prove it. It is an informed expert opinion - I have studied the relevant maths and philosophy enough so it is based on some small level of expertise in the topic. Enough to know that there is a good case that Penrose has that the others in the discussion for the most part don't understand because they don't have the context of e.g. Hilbert's program to try to reduce all maths to algorithms and Godel's proof that Hilbert's program is impossible.
See my:
Bing Chat / ChatGPT generates random long paragraphs from the internet - e.g. story about Bing Chat riding a wild horse - no evidence of intelligence - some mathematicians think AGI is impossible - superintelligence would have capacity for kindness
See also my:
If strong AI was possible - future AI more like Marvin in Hitchhiker’s guide than Terminator
If A Program Can't Understand Truth - Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence Babies
Why Strong Artificial Intelligences Need Protection From Us - Not Us From Them
Anyway whatever ones thoughts about all that it is currently and in the foreseeable future, science fiction.
We have nothing remotely able to do this.
Nothing understands anything.
Example of using machine learning for missile systems and air defences in the ukraine war
They don’t mention even one positive for chatbots this time.
Yes AI can be used to harm, we have machine learning in bomb guidance systems for instance.
But that’s like Asimov’s handles for the knives. The machine learning doesn't make the decision about the target. Humans make the decision. It just helps keep it on track. And with lots of failsafes
A bomb that uses machine learning is usually set to dispose of the bomb harmlessly in some way if it is not totally sure that it has reached the correct target. So it’s far safer than a “dumb bomb” that could hit anywhere within 30 meters or more of the target.
Say, the Stormshadow when it hit a submarine in Sevastopol harbour. They would give it an image of what the submarine looks like and as it got closer, it would look for that image and it would know where to hit in that image, looking for something that looks like a nuclear sub.
And to hit it in a particular place where it is most vulnerable to a strike.
So the human sets the target. It's not going to hit anywhere except that GPS point where the sub is. But it does last minute decisions to make sure it is hitting a sub and where to hit. And if it doesn't see anything resembling a sub it would just divert away and explode harmlessly concluding something went wrong.
All the ones that use pattern recognition
The Russians try to jam the GPS. But with limited success.
They try to shoot down the missiles but that also uses machine learning and the Russian systems arent' very good.
Whle Patriot is very good and spots targets and it can navigate to intercept even when they are weaving around.
Because it just uses pattern recognition it's passive so there is nothing for them to pick up, no radar or anything.
It uses GPS to find the right place then pattern recognition for the last little bit.
So machine learning is used in that way with all the most modern missile systems in the Ukraine war.
Machine learning for air defences like patriot
This is another use of machine learning, to protect Kyiv from the Kalibr hypersonic missiles.
Patriot is astonishingly good. The Russians did manage to overwhelm it by sending vast numbers of missiles.
However they only managed it once and they had to save up missiles for several months to do that.
Apart from that it shoots down everything they fire at it. It can shoot down ballistic missiles with far too short a response time for human operators.
However it has to be used carefully. In the Iraq war the US shot down some of their own fighter jets using the Patriot semi-automatic mode.
The issue is it has a limited number of air interceptors and when they are all fired it has to reload and the reloading takes time. So if Russia can fire more missiles than the number of air interceptors they can overwhelm it.
There was one big attack and a few missiles got through that killed some civilians in Kyiv but didn't even cause one serious blackout. That is because of Patriot. Ukraine has three complete Patriot systems. Plus a NASAMs plus many other air defence systems. The Gephard tanks from Germany are very good at shooting down low cost drones. They use ammunition to fire at a target in the sky.
Machine learning all around us doing many useful things
Anyway we have machine learning all around us. It’s in our smart phones, our laptops, it’s managing our electricity grid. It helps identify images for Google image search, and helps translate with Google Translate.
.It is used to help spot signals in MRI scans that might otherwise be missed.
Here is a recent development, a way to take MRI scans of the heart without injecting a dye to help heighten the contrast:
Once completely validated, this new technology may slash the time that patients need to spend in an MRI scanner from the standard 30-45 minutes to within 15 minutes, saving more than half the scan cost, yet producing images that are clearer, more diagnostically useful, and easier to interpret.
. How artificial intelligence is shaping medical imaging
Another example
. Artificial Intelligence Reconstructs Missing Data from Rapid MRI Scans
CONTACT ME VIA PM OR ON FACEBOOK OR EMAIL
If you need to talk to me about something it is often far better to do so via private / direct messaging because Quora often fails to notify me of comment replies.
You can Direct Message my profile (then More >> messages). Or better, email me at support@robertinventor.com
Or best of all Direct Message me on Facebook if you are okay joining Facebook. My Facebook profile is here:. Robert Walker I usually get Facebook messages much faster than on the other platforms as I spend most of my day there.
FOR MORE HELP
To find a debunk see: List of articles in my Debunking Doomsday blog to date See also my Short debunks
Scared and want a story debunked? Post to our Facebook group. Please look over the group rules before posting or commenting as they help the group to run smoothly
Facebook group Doomsday Debunked
Also do join our facebook group if you can help with fact checking or to help scared people who are panicking.
SEARCH LIST OF DEBUNKS
You can search by title and there’s also an option to search the content of the blog using a google search.
CLICK HERE TO SEARCH: List of articles in my Debunking Doomsday blog to date
NEW SHORT DEBUNKS
I do many more fact checks and debunks on our facebook group than I could ever write up as blog posts. They are shorter and less polished but there is a good chance you may find a short debunk for some recent concern.
See Latest short debunks for new short debunks
I also do tweets about them. I also tweet the debunks and short debunks to my Blue Sky page here:
Then on the Doomsday Debunked wiki, see my Short Debunks page which is a single page of all the earlier short debunks in one page.
I do the short debunks more often but they are less polished - they are copies of my longer replies to scared people in the Facebook group.rough Ukraine and will do so no matter what its allies do to support Ukraine.