Mathematician who predicted ‘Doomsday’ in a few weeks' time was correct about 'dangerous' AI theory

A mathematician who once made a chilling prediction about ‘Doomsday’ issued an eerie reminder about the growing threat posed by artificial intelligence.

Back in 1960, Heinz von Foerster published a paper in the journal Science with a very very warning about the future of humanity.

His theory suggested that the Earth could reach capacity as a result of rapid human population growth.

Decades later, it has resurfaced on social media as the doomsday date he suggested is in a few weeks.

While there have been warnings about our planet's demise in the past, von Foerster’s stands out because it’s rooted in mathematics.

While we wait for the date to arrive, which ironically falls on Friday, 13th November 2026, he also addressed the topic of AI more than 30 years ago.

The arrival of AI has already reshaped the fabric of our lives in just a few short years, transforming not only how we work and communicate, but how we interact with the world around us.

In 1995, the mathematician sat down with The Information Philosopher to discuss the technology, a striking reminder that long before AI became woven into everyday life, experts were already grappling with the profound ways it could reshape humanity.

Heinz von Foerster is known for his 'Doomsday' prediction (Getty Stock Image)

He discussed the idea that AI can ‘think’ the same way humans do, which is a dangerous path to go down.

We should not assume that AI’s reasoning or understanding of the world mirrors our own simply because it communicates with us in human-like ways, as seen in generative AI chatbots powered by large language models that can interpret and reproduce human language.

He explained this theory by using a hypothetical involving a robot that can rearrange blocks. “The founders and proponents of Artificial Intelligence were from the beginning very much motivated and extremely competent to go after highly specialized tasks as, for instance, how to build a robot which could rearrange an arrangement of blocks into another desired arrangement.”

AI can perform tasks that look intelligent without thinking the same way humans do, but it is not the same as human intelligence. “The performance of these machines are very impressive indeed, but I see them more as witnesses to the extraordinary natural intelligence of their designers, rather than cases of ‘artificial intelligence.’

“The anthropomorphization of these machine functions I see insofar as dangerous, because one may be tempted to believe that when we say ‘this machine 'thinks’ we know now how we think, for we know how the machine ‘thinks.’”

People are increasingly turning to AI for therapy, companionship and even romantic relationships (Getty Stock Image)

To anthropomorphize means to give human traits, such as emotions and behaviors, or even physical forms, to a non-human thing or object, like a car, food or an animal.

“Syntactically, however, the distinction is clear, for when the machines 'thinks' they do it between quotes: quote think unquote. Except for the name there is nothing in common between the functions 'think' and think!”

A machine ‘thinking’ and thinking as a human are fundamentally different things and the only thing they have in common is that we use the same word to describe them.

His response was that we could may machines behaving intelligently for machines actually thinking like humans. Just because AI can perform tasks we associate with human intelligence, he argued, does not mean it's underlying processes resemble our own.

Fast-forward to the present and people are increasingly, and worringly, relying on AI for human-like connection. People have reported having romantic ‘relationships’ with chatbots and experts have raised concerns about vulnerable individuals using chatbots as therapists, and a study showed the shocking effects using AI frequently has on your mind.

However AI cannot ‘think’ in the human sense, according to von Foerster, who died in 2002 aged 90.