3 Endings More Poetic Than AI Wiping Us Out

I don’t like the AI doom narrative

The universe began one day and one day it will end.

The Big Crunch is a mirror of the Big Bang. An explosion of impossible magnitude birthed the universe and, according to this idea, it will end in an equally ineffable implosion — just to be reborn once again in a sort of Nietzschean eternal return.

The Big Rip is a rather dramatic event where, due to the progressive expansion of the universe, the very fabric of space-time will break apart. First galaxies, then stars and planets, and finally atoms. All matter will turn to shreds in an astronomical festivity of intergalactic confetti that will cease once an infinite distance separates each elementary piece from all others.

The Big Freeze — my favorite — is also called the heat death. Once the universe reaches maximum entropy there won’t be enough high-quality (i.e., usable) energy for anything interesting to ever happen again. A still, inert, dark atemporal and aspatial wasteland waiting forever in perpetual silence.

These are the three endings of our universe.

Of course, it’s all hypothetical. This is the kind of uncertain conjecture scientists like to engage in to make sense of the world around us. We ignore which one — if any — will…