One of Nostradamus' most terrifying predictions may be coming true with apocalypse fears growing

As fears over AI's impact on humanity continue to grow, a 500-year-old prediction made by the legendary seer Nostradamus could be coming true sooner than we thought.

Michel de Nostredame has been credited for predicting some of the most impactful moments in human history, from the Great Fire of London to JFK's assassination to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Now, with worries about the future of artificial intelligence dialling up, people have been looking back at one warning from the 16th century astrologer with a whole new lens.

It comes after a former AI researcher who worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic revealed fears the technology 'could kill us all'.

Jacob Coxon shared the chilling message on X, where he wrote: "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt."

The following day, Anthropic announced it had stopped several potential plots to build biological weapons using its own AI software.

OpenAI boss Sam Altman admitted they need to 'pace the frontier' (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

This in turn prompted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to publish an essay called We Must Pace the Frontier on Saturday (September 12), suggesting a three-point plan to slow the advancement of AI, warning that it could lead to the destruction of what we know.

Meanwhile, Sam Altman CEO of OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, agreed they need to 'pace the frontier,' before revealing 'two ways AI could go very badly'.

"First, we could lose control of the future of AI," which he called 'unacceptable', writing on X.

"We are unapologetically on Team Humanity and AI must always serve people," he said. "To ensure that, we need to ensure that alignment and safety techniques stay ahead of progress in model capabilities."

His other concern was that we could 'end up in a world with too much concentration of power,' adding: "If an extraordinarily powerful AI is used by one person or company to impress their worldview onto everyone else, the results could be extremely dystopian."

People believe Nostradamus was warning about the future impact of AI (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

But what does any of this have to do with Nostradamus?

In a passage labeled Century IV, Quatrain 31 in his 1555 book Les Propheties, he said: "The Moon in the full of night over the high mountain, the new sage with a lone brain sees it: By his disciples invited to be immortal, eyes to the south. Hands in bosoms, bodies in the fire."

Readers have now taken 'lone brain, 'immortal' and 'disciples' to mean some kind of computer or machine intelligence, while 'the new sage' is interpreted as technology.

Back in 1989, hypnotherapist Dolores Cannon released a book called Conversations with Nostradamus, which claimed one of her patients had been channelling the seer while under hypnosis and explaining his predictions.

She wrote that Century IV, Quatrain 31 was about a future genius who would copy his mind into an 'organic computer' so his knowledge could live on after he died.