The World Ends In Hugs

The world is supposed to end tomorrow. I'm not worried. Just another in a long string of prophecies made by ancient peoples who got the math wrong. The world will no doubt eventually end, just not tomorrow.

I'm an anthropology professor, and tomorrow I'm giving a guest lecture to a friend's computer science class. I've got both feeds open, the feed for anthropology and the feed for AI and robotics, looking for some talking points for my lecture.

So I see it right away when some scientists start talking about AI support for the end of the world prediction. The clickbait draws me in. Apparently, a few super intelligent AIs were fed some data sets discovered on a Mayan tablet, the AIs tasked a few telescopes, checked some things, and boom, they were convinced.

Tomorrow's the end of the world.

It's 9:57 PM. My wife and my two kids are upstairs. There's nothing on when exactly tomorrow the world is supposed to end. Just that the AIs say tomorrow really is the day. They're not sad about it, because they're AIs. Just matter of fact.

10:17 PM. A lot of really smart people were probably going to come out against the AI prediction, but then the President came out against it, so maybe now they're conflicted.

10:24 PM. The president tweets: "We're not all going to die because some ancient people who couldn't do math in English said so. Not on my watch!"

You'd think despite the president getting it right this time, some scientists would also be saying the AIs were wrong, just to keep everyone calm.

I don't know if people are calm or not. There are a lot of hysterical posts online. The president is calling for a stop to rioting. I can't really find any signs the rioting is happening, but I guess it could be.

J-Law posts a picture of an unknown toddler hurling toilet paper around a bathroom, tagged #rioting #endtimes!

11:04 PM. One of my colleagues posts that major AI project teams in 19 countries agree there is a better than 100% probability it's all over, if the AIs know what they're talking about.

11:22 PM. The president tweets (with typos): "A computer, by definition, is not a smart think. It can't thing. Glorified calculators!"

11:41 PM. Glorified calculators!

11:48 PM. I feel like Jor-El without a spaceship.

11:50 PM. Just to be on the safe side, I decide to go to bed.

An apologetic eye roll is the only reply my wife gets when she asks me why I'm moving the kids into our bed. She wants to know what's up. She's been reading. Paper books don't interrupt themselves to tell you the world is ending. I don't mention it. I just tell her we need extra hugging.

She asks why.

I say extra hugging needs no excuse.

And it doesn't. You just get in there and start squeezing. While there's still time.