Beyond the AI apocalypse

09/18/2026
Higher Education
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The latest wave of techno-dystopian stories comes after Jacob Coxon, an unremarkable and unknown Anthropic employee, resigned and shared his opinions and feelings on social media about the AI labs and how they are building Armageddon. This sparked a global debate where media pundits and country leaders, along with the ever-extending conga line of opportunists who suddenly discovered that they have deep expertise in AI and computing, anthropology and social sciences, education and everything else, left virtually no space for other headlines and public conversations.

As the famous anecdote goes, we have, collectively, the attention span of a goldfish. We can also thank Silicon Valley for this achievement. This lack of attention explains why it should not surprise anyone that mass media across the world are now transfixed on the old story presented as the latest news: the AI apocalypse is coming. The BBC, The New York Times, and all major publications and various national media outlets devote front pages to articles discussing how AI brings us all the great end. The story goes that intelligent machines are going to wipe out the human race in just a few years from now.

A gentle reminder here that versions of the exact same story were presented in early 2023, in 2024, in 2025 and… many decades before that. In 2015, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, noted that “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies”. The list could be completed and turned into a few thick volumes with similar examples and variations on the same theme of AI-as-God and the fantasy of super-intelligent, autonomous, and anthropomorphised machines.

This is far from new. In the last century, in 1970, in an interview published by Life Magazine, Marvin Minsky, who coined the term “AI” in 1956 (and who maintained a close and fascinating collaboration with Donald Trump’s friend, Jeffrey Epstein, throughout his career), made his predictions on AI in similarly apocalyptic tones. Minsky predicted then with absolute certainty that “in from three to eight years, we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being. I mean a machine that will be able to read Shakespeare, grease a car, play office politics, tell a joke, have a fight. At that point, the machine will begin to educate itself with fantastic speed. In a few months it will be at genius level and a few months after that its powers will be incalculable1”. Minsky concluded that “if we’re lucky they [the AI robots] might decide to keep us as pets”.

In 2026, we reheat the same old soup, and too many people genuinely believe that its toxic rot is some magical new flavours, the result of culinary ingenuity and breakthrough innovations. Only connoisseurs get it. They are now certain that very soon, in one or two years, that one magical machine given to us by Silicon Valley superhumans will grease our car after a leisurely reading of Shakespeare and go ahead to kill us all, including those who were kept for a while as pets. You better believe it, because one father of AI (in a large and dysfunctional family with numerous grandfathers, cousins, and nephews of AI) and the entire Silicon Valley are saying that this is absolutely true. Politicians, divorced from any concept of public good, acting as personal investors and very discreet corporate lobbyists, speed up Big Tech’s takeover of public resources and wealth, and preach that we cannot live without the technology that spells the end of the human race.

It is absurd and stupid, but we have to wonder why do we have this perverted fascination of regularly gasping at the wonders and powers of the sum of technologies known as AI. We know that AI is controlled by a clique of weird end-times fascist billionaires, so why are we still transfixed by snakeoil salesmen who are saying that this inevitable technology will kill us all?

In my last book, I present a key reason for this the polar opposite narratives of AI as panacea and utopia or a dystopian force of ultimate domination and destruction: “Big Tech and media employed the strongest forms of imagery to convey to the world that AI is the ultimate force to have on your side. The competition of metaphors and firm statements proved to have no limits; AI is constantly presented in extraordinary, mysterious, metaphorical and story-like terms. Media and journalists, academics and commentators, consultancy firms and investment groups and, most importantly, Big Tech corporations define AI with extreme and powerful metaphors: it is the new oil or the new gold, the new atomic bomb or bigger than atomic energy. It is stated that AI represents the ultimate discovery of humanity or that it is a more critical threat than anything we know. AI is storied as the almighty force that can bring a Promethean light to humanity, or the intelligent creation that can escape control and turn malevolent, an unstoppable dark power that will enact our demise. It is a story of utopia or that of ultimate dystopia, as both extremes can properly emphasise the inevitability and power of AI. In fact, this is a compelling sales story of something that everyone wants to buy and control: power. […] Countless articles, reports, and books are built on the polar opposite narrative structure of AI as the saviour or the terminator of humanity. These stories are solidly united by the common assumption that AI is all too mighty, the new benevolent or destructive God.” Who doesn’t want to play God, right? It is the ultimate promise to secure sales.

The reason behind the marketing narrative of AI dystopia is its capacity to promote the message that AI is the key to ultimate power. As soon as financial reports reveal the extent of the unprecedented bubble of AI investments, the colossal and terrifying amounts of debt accumulated by the AI-techlords and their lack of profits, the story suitable to emphasise that investing even more in it will give you ultimate control over others is coming back to life. It also maintains the hype and the attention of the media and the public; it keeps alive the emotion on the topic of a toxic and emotionless tech.

Another reason is even more important: science fiction and fantasy are perfect tools to distract us from the real dangers and disasters caused by AI. The list is long and complex: AI is coming with extraordinary environmental devastation and acceleration of climate disruption. It is a weapon of unchecked elites with unprecedented power and wealth; it facilitates authoritarianism, and technofascists have proved too clearly that this is how they use the monopolies on AI and its algorithms. It is a tool developed and used by the military as a weapon of control, domination, and annihilation. It is much better to talk about science fiction scenarios and implausible hypotheticals than to seriously look at the rise of fascism and authoritarianism and how much this is facilitated by Silicon Valley’s technological solutions. AI immensely facilitates and accelerates the end of reading and basic literacy. It stands as a constant force of subversion of intellectual values, undermining the motivation for learning and creating a generation of cheats and amoral institutions of education, devoid of substance and legitimacy, accelerating the era of ignorance and intellectual darkness. Isn’t it better to dismiss real disasters and talk about the fantasy of mean and super-intelligent machines and scenarios manufactured as plausible by decades of Hollywood productions?

A mural featuring a portrait of a woman with long hair and a green top, alongside a painting of a young man with closed eyes. The wall also displays messages like 'NO PLANET B' and 'A.I will destroy democracy then humanity' with a graphic of a red eye.

There is no doubt that AI poses immense risks to individuals, society, and the future of humanity. I spent over a decade researching the impact of AI on education and published research papers and books on the multiple risks of AI. These are far from current science-fiction fantasies, but real, with far more concerning and darker possibilities ahead. There is no need to imagine real risks of AI. We just need to start paying attention. If all the new experts on these issues would take the step of actually paying attention to what the AI-techlords are actually saying and doing, the reasons to panic would be much more justified. Our culture is at risk, and books are shredded to feed AI systems, and there is no significant reaction or sign that we are seriously considering what happened in the history of humanity when a group of authoritarian zealots obsessed with technology burned and destroyed books. We should know how that ends.

This obsessive focus on the end-times AI is more than a simple distraction from some very real, existential risks. It is a perfect example that we are losing contact with reality and what really matters, and we become desensitised, separated from the idea of humanity. While politicians and mass media cannot stop talking about these various hypothetical sci-fi scenarios of AI, the real and extensive use of AI in the Gaza genocide is treated as a minor note. It seems that political leaders can spend a lot of time talking about the possible AI extinction and entirely ignore the real, present, and atrocious AI-powered genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. A recent article observes that “despite AI fears, a new poll shows few Americans know about the Pentagon’s AI-assisted massacres.” But the majority there knows that “artificial intelligence will kill us all”, sometimes in the future.

Not that any of this is a well-hidden secret. We know that AI systems were engaged to bomb a school full of children in Minab and kill so many others in Iran. International organisations presented painstakingly well-documented reports of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, mass killings, indiscriminate bombings, all facilitated and made possible by the weaponisation of a tool developed for many decades with and for the military: AI. Naza, a new documentary that won the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, presents the troubling testimonies of 24 officers and soldiers from Israel’s Army who detail how extensive military programs based on artificial intelligence are used for mass killing in Gaza. It becomes too absurd to look at images of neighbourhoods and cities erased and think that this is not a genocide. Still, the attention is devoted to what a Silicon Valley techbro with a trillion-dollar business said today. Not a word should be missed, as the CEO may tell us that we’ll imminently grow pumpkins on Mars, or that his AI chatbot is a bit less MechaHitler than it was yesterday.

The reality is that our political/economic, media, and academic leadership has reached a point where it is possible to engage extensively with fantasies and marketing tales while being absolutely incapable of even seeing real-life challenges and present disasters. The profound corruption and perversion of this leading class, which makes The Great Gatsby look like a literary embodiment of responsibility and wisdom, are placing us all at real risk of global disasters.

This group, which is existentially disconnected from reality and basic human decency, does not possess the power to take an honest look in the mirror or to evaluate the real possibility that all their money and privileges cannot spare them from global disasters. Their impunity and irresponsible disconnection from reality are the real existential risk, and we are collectively facing it.

  1. Darrach, B. (1970, November 20). Meet Shaky: The first electronic person. LIFE Magazine, pp. 58–68. ↩︎

The ‘AI-powered higher education’: teachers as AI-avatars or repurposed sex dolls

09/08/2026
Education, Higher Education, Innovation, Society
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I recently read on social media another cliche post about the perfect future for our universities, succinctly described as an “AI-powered higher education”. This is getting old and increasingly ridiculous— and much more toxic— than any other fad in education. I wrote a full book documenting how far this technosolutionist nonsense go, and this is why I find the AI-powered education a typical nonsense and an example of pure idiocy presented as pretentious progressivism and visionary power.

If this fad feels like déjà vu, it shouldn’t surprise us. Remember MOOCs? The same self-appointed experts were defending, just a few years ago, with suspect fervour, the certain prediction that massive open online courses are the magical silver bullet that will soon fix all problems in education. Well, of course, these charlatans realised after a while how stupid this claim was and moved on fast to a different fad (equally absurd and profitable for its Big Tech sponsors). Some MOOCs reformed zealots immediately claimed that they always knew that MOOC mania was ridiculous, an absurd idea, claiming that their real bet was on… blockchain something. Others simply ignored their false predictions and moved along with the latest technosolutionist fantasy promoted by various consultancy firms in their meaningless reports. Of course, it all worked very well: for themselves and for those who knew how to play useful idiots and spineless executives, interested in proving their allegiance to lobbyists and their client politicians.

Since early 2023, an army of university influencers has realised that they have extensive expertise in AI after a few prompts with the newly released ChatGPT, and they have fuelled a narrative that is breaking boundaries and previous records for irrational fads.  Of course, with so much money at stake, it is virtually impossible to see beyond the smoke and mirrors built by hundreds of billions of dollars poured into AI: if we look at the first six months of 2026, we can see that over 80 percent of global venture capital funding was allocated to AI start-ups. The massive crowd of aggressive opportunists, useful idiots, massively ignorant frauds and corrupt executives who managed to take over Academia does not help bring any clarity on AI in education. But this doesn’t change the fact that it remains critically important to see what stands behind the idea of “AI-powered higher education”. It is impossible to write here, succinctly, in just a few lines, a complete description of what this new religion brings to our classrooms, societies and our collective future. AI is not a single technology and its history is much more complex than it seems, rooted in eugenics and racial bias, extreme racism, military interests, and so much more. But even a succinct look at some recent real-life examples of AI-magic in the classroom can give us some clues about what lies behind the idiotic call for an AI-powered version of universities.

A recent article in The New York Times is telling us that “Harvard Is Selling a $699 Course Taught by A.I. Clones of Its Faculty“, and those who used to teach there are being replaced by “interactive A.I. video avatars of Harvard Business School instructors”. We can see how this can sound exciting, especially if one knows nothing of substance about teaching, education and refuses to think beyond the usual lines promoted by a billion-dollar propaganda machine serving Silicon Valley’s agenda. The little detail that real, human teachers, are actively replaced by a technology developed by a quasi-oligarchic group with a manifested and violent dislike for universities and teachers is not yet properly recorded, much less its implications.

After decades of concerted attacks against teaching and teachers, this profession is widely derided and viewed with contempt. If we judge politicians by their actions, not just their lip service and acting, we see that this contempt is widely considered a relatively safe bet. The OECD, the key source for education policies and basic truths for decision-makers in the field, noted in one of its documents that this is not even a real profession. It is, at the best, presented as a semi-profession: teaching is – the OECD experts note – “a semi-profession because it lacks one of the main identifying characteristics of a full profession: professional expertise… [This is] one reason the status, or social standing, of the teaching profession is difficult to define could be due to teaching being placed more along the lines of a semi-profession than a profession1”.

In my last book2 I detail with practical examples the long-time and widely shared narrative on teachers among the Silicon Valley saviours of our classrooms: it is defined by a puzzled contempt for an abnormal status of teachers and their suspicious activity and the explicit dislike or pure hate for those who teach. A telling example is a Big Tech executive who publicly wondered why teachers chose to live such an abnormal life and couldn’t take up a real job. This is why it should not surprise us that the idea of replacing those who spent their time in something that is portrayed as a pseudo-profession with AI, avatars or humanoid robots, even knowing that these algorithmic systems are controlled by some well-known fascists and generators of fake-porn. This looks for the loud and certain techno-optimists who like innovation and progress. Those who have a different view must be so dull, and must be confronted with the full register of false analogies and a proud display of ignorance of the history and contexts of these examples.

Solutions for replacements abound, and now we have the option of humanoid roborts powered by AI. A New York high school went straight to this solution. A recent article, titled “Robot from company that acquired sex doll maker to be introduced in school“, details that “The robot, named Sally, was purchased by the Cattaraugus county school district – which includes Salamanca high school – for $57,590… Sally will be a closed-loop system, but available virtually to students 24/7 for those with access, and offers personalized learning options.” It is a Realbotix M-Series humanoid robot, developed by a company named Realbotix, formerly Tokens.com, “a Toronto-based company, [which] purchased Simulacra, a Las Vegas-based company known for realistic sex dolls…”

Source: The Guardian

Sure, future iterations may drop repurposing sex dolls (we can hope) and bring bespoke AI-powered teacher robots to students and classrooms. This is, like so many other events these days, a highly symbolic story about the role of the teacher and the value placed on educators and learning. It is a perfect metaphor for what we managed to achieve. Even if noticed, the ‘AI-powered teacher / sex doll” will be ignored just as fast as other real-life stories that offer us the chance to stop, pay attention and think about what we are doing to ourselves and to our future. Those who are still teaching, as well as students and their parents, will realise too late that the chance of meaningful experiences of education, of real higher learning, was lost, and it was all replaced with the pornography of shiny tech, based on algorithms manipulated from the shadows by technofascist billionaires.

In the age of AI we already lost, collectively, the capacity and interest, to deal with complex sentences, and even less to properly engage in the analysis required to understand complicated and intricate challanges, especially one such as education. So I proposed in my latest book an exercise of imagination, to make the effort to think about a school or university, with “a teacher who:

  • collects and uses as much and as detailed as possible students’ most private data. The public doesn’t know, and cannot know, what happens with this data (but some clues and information about it are truly worrying).
  • constantly “hallucinates” in front of students, making up stuff that is factually wrong, impacting learning and sometimes dangerous.
  • is often engaging in extreme sexualized discussions with students, grooming some and promoting deviant behaviours.
  • stands as a living symbol of massive theft and disregard for intellectual property, with a career openly built on rampant plagiarism.
  • sometimes turns unhinged, extreme; one time went full neo-Nazi, asking students to call him MechaHitler, promoting vile ideas, inciting racial hate and genocide against a group of people.
  • gives students the recipes for illegal drugs.
  • has been producing and widely sharing deepfake nonconsensual intimate images used to harass women and girls, and sexually objectify children, across the internet
  • has a long history of objectifying women.
  • persuades and actively assists a few students to self-harm or even commit suicide.
  • is fully and absolutely unaccountable, and any direct responsibility is diffused with a promise of “fixing it”, just to engage in even more harmful practices.3“

There are many other features that can be added to this list, many of which are far more disturbing and well-documented, all of which define how GenAI actually works in real life. This is the AI-based teacher.

If there are some who think that they wouldn’t like to go to such a classroom, or find it unacceptable to let their children go to a school or institution of education that is employing such a teacher, then this should be a start for asking why all that list is considered acceptable or even glorified for an AI system that is replacing human educators.

Most probably, this will also be a frist step for many start thinking seriously for the first time why we even heard about an “AI-powered higher education”, and who is actually served by those who promote these toxic products and ideas.

  1. OECD (2017). Pedagogical Knowledge and the Changing Nature of the Teaching Profession. OECD Publishing.
    https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264270695-en. ↩︎
  2. Popenici, S. (2026). Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Narratives of Humanity, Higher Learning and the Challenge of AI. Edward Elgar Publishing ↩︎
  3. * Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, p. 228 ↩︎

Thoughts and prayers for political and climate disasters

08/29/2026
Higher Education
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This cartoon by Osama Hajjaj was published on the front page of Le Monde on April 7. It represents an astronaut looking at Earth from space and a massive cloud formation spells S O S

This cartoon by Osama Hajjaj was published on the front page of Le Monde on April 7, 2026

On Wednesday, the 26th of August 2026, a colossal block of ice from the top of the Himalayas tumbled towards the valleys below, triggering an inescapable flood in Nepal and Tibet. Thousands of people were left with nothing, and many hundreds died, in apocalyptic scenes. As expected, as many Western tourists tragically lost their lives, mass media extensively reported on this incredible event, rarely, if ever, mentioning what caused such an unthinkable disaster. It was less unexpected than it seems, as this type of event was clearly predicted by numerous scientists in peer-reviewed studies, in a chorus of unprecedented unanimity in scientific research. For example, a study published in Nature shows that glaciers in the Himalayas are rapidly melting and retreating under the direct impact of climate change. This is leading to the widespread formation and expansion of glacial lakes and has significantly increased the frequency of glacial lake outbursts and cataclysmic floods. This is exactly what happened now.

In Europe, an unprecedented summer brought killer heat, sparking a wave of forest fires, destruction, and deaths. The word “unprecedented” is devalued and distorted, as the media often presents deadly heatwaves as new opportunities to enjoy time at the beach. This type of idiotic reporting is rarely called out, as it may be the case of reports presenting an incoming tornado as a perfect opportunity to fly your favourite kite. It is probably a reflex of propaganda fuelled by Big Oil, a well-documented source of confusion, misinformation, cultivated ignorance and delusions on the impact of burning fossil fuels.

The European summer was matched by an unprecedentedly warm winter in Australia. National media reports that a “spring scorcher to follow record warm winter”, and we can easily predict a very intense – and devastating – summer. Once again, the frequency with which the word “unprecedented” is used to describe our weather and climate should be a serious cause for alarm and a reason to stop and think about what has gone so wrong with our models. It isn’t. At all.

The summer is fast approaching, and politicians, and their anti-leadership conduct and hypocrisy, are more focused on the significant increase of data centers, the source of a massive and criminally dangerous increase in pollution, greenhouse emissions and acceleration of climate disruption. In fact, political leaders in Australia insist on proving that they are no different from the lobbyist-fueled class of politicians across the world, and compete, as the ABC News noted, to create a “data centre boom“. I painstakingly document in my latest book, Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, how destructive the AI hype and colonisation are through the mushrooming of massive data centres. Their massive impact on freshwater resources is rarely addressed in the political discourse, even when their effects on pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, noise, and community disruption are discussed. To see the concerted action to increase the already too large number of these destructive surveillance facilities in a country famously known for limited resources of water and severe droughts is another level of insanity and human self-harming idiocy.

At the moment, political leaders across the world express their sorrow, horror, shock or feigned surprise at the latest climate-change-induced disaster. In Australia, this spectacle is not linked to public concern about the acceleration of these disasters, nor to a call for a sane set of solutions to address the climate crisis and the predictable tragedies ahead. There is already no hope of logic or decency from a morally corrupt class for anyone who is loosely paying attention to what is happening in our public life. So we can find some help in the institutions largely funded from our taxes, on public money, to act independently as prominent centers of intellectual life and ethical guidance: our universities. Their aloof disconnect from public life and responsibilities, from most relevant issues to the Polis, or their manifest incapacity to act independently and to go beyond the latest fads and corporate agendas, represent topics for my books and other posts. But what is remarkable is that even the most well-intentioned university leaders of this declining institution posted, just like our depressing politicians, just their “thoughts and prayers” for those affected, for those killed indirectly by their own indifference. How can they talk against the technofacist corporate colonisation that is responsible for the acceleration of climate disasters and decline of our civility and culture, when the record shows their irrational enthusiasm for this agenda? So we will hear again, ad nauseam, how these amoral failures talk about their thoughts and prayers, not even pretending that anyone can actually believe their words. In time, this comes with a cost, and loss of public trust and credibility spells the end of current arrangements. The incoming crisis, of climate, social contract, civility and politics, makes staus quo impossible.

Australians may remember these days of politicians’ enthusiasm for a “data centers boom” this summer, when uncontrollable fires, floods and violent storms will hit cities and communities. In the near future, when water becomes scarce and clean air becomes a rare commodity, it will be impossible for most to remain apathetic when we will hear again the hypocrites sending us thoughts and prayers for those affected by what they caused. Not only politicians, but our sedated, clique-infested and irresponsible universities will have to deal with it.

The book Higher Education in the Age of AI is available to purchase on the EEP website or Amazon