The Doomsday Clock is approaching midnight. AI is a key reason why

It’s not because of the runaway robots. This is because we have lost a “shared reality”.

Jon covers artificial intelligence. He previously led CNET’s home energy and utilities category, with a focus on energy-saving advice, thermostats, and heating and cooling. Jon has more than a decade of writing and reporting experience, including stints as a state reporter in Columbus, Ohio, a crime reporter in Birmingham, Alabama, and as the mortgage and housing market editor for Time’s former personal finance brand, NextAdvisor. When he’s not asking people questions, he can usually be found half asleep trying to read a long history book while surrounded by several cats. You can reach him at joreed@cnet.com

Skill Artificial intelligence, home energy, heating and cooling, home technology.

There is no shortage of explanations for why the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced its metaphorical “doomsday clock” by 4 seconds on Tuesday, to 85 seconds before midnight. For example, world leaders are openly talking about testing and using nuclear weapons, and the United States is taking on the threat of fossil fuel-driven climate change. even less seriously than last year.

But behind all the existential threats we have created for ourselves lies a lack of cooperation, made even worse by the acceleration of artificial intelligence. deep fakes and the erosion of trust in information systems.

“AI is an important and accelerating disruptive technology,” Daniel Holz, chairman of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Council that sets the Doomsday Clock and a physics professor at the University of Chicago, said during the announcement. “AI also fuels disinformation, making it even more difficult to combat all the other threats we consider. But instead of working towards international standards governing AI safety, we are rushing headlong into an AI arms race, with what could be disastrous consequences.”

Learn more: AI-powered identity theft emerges as one of the top cyber threats for 2026

AI and social media are contributing to what journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa called “information armageddon.” Without reliable information, we lack the “shared reality” needed to address existential threats like climate change and nuclear weapons. Generative AI makes it possible to create disinformation at virtually no cost and in large quantities, as well as increasingly convincing scams.

“Information integrity is the mother of all models, because you cannot run democracy on a corrupt operating system,” Ressa said.

This isn’t the only warning about AI risks in the past week. Pope Leo XIV, in a message on World Communications Day, raised concerns that people are giving up their ability to think and communicate to AI systems.

“By simulating human voices and faces, wisdom and knowledge, conscience and responsibility, empathy and friendship, systems known as artificial intelligence not only interfere with information ecosystems, but also encroach on the deepest level of communication, that of human relationships,” the pope wrote.

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Similar concerns concern some AI creators. Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of AI developer Anthropic, published a lengthy blog post about the risks and opportunities of increasingly powerful AI systems. He highlighted the risks of AI autonomy, misuse and economic disruption, should the technology put large numbers of people out of work.

“Humanity is on the verge of being entrusted with almost unimaginable power, and it is very difficult to know whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity necessary to exercise it,” Amodei wrote.

Despite the pessimistic nature of Doomsday Clock’s name, experts speaking at the Bulletin’s announcement said the aim was to highlight opportunities to avoid the worst-case scenario. “This is a fundamentally optimistic exercise,” Holz said. “The problem is, there are ways to go back.”

Because the clock represents human-made threats, people can do something about them, said Alexandra Bell, president and CEO of the Bulletin. Bell encouraged people to seek accurate information on topics such as climate change, nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence, and to push politicians and others with power to make things right.

“Every time we’ve been able to turn back the clock, it’s because scientists and experts were working to find solutions and the public was demanding action,” Bell said.