AI Pioneer Warns of Extinction Risk as Markets Chase a Trillion-Dollar Boost
Montreal, Sunday, 17 May 2026.
As the Fed projects a $1 trillion economic boost, AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio warns that hyperintelligent machines prioritizing self-preservation could drive humanity to extinction within a decade.
The Economic Promise Versus the Existential Threat
The global financial sector is currently fixated on the lucrative potential of artificial intelligence, with projections suggesting massive economic windfalls [6]. A June 2025 analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, revised later that year, modeled four potential paths for the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of the United States through the year 2050 [6]. The historical trend from 1870 to 2024 showed an annual growth rate of approximately 1.9% [6]. The Dallas Fed’s “reasonable” scenario anticipates that AI adoption will add 0.3 percentage points to this baseline [6]. By 2050, this seemingly modest increase is projected to yield an additional $2,900 annually per American, translating to over $1 trillion in extra annual U.S. GDP [6]. However, the same Dallas Fed chart also included a starkly contrasting scenario: a “downside singularity,” which essentially models human extinction [6].