Humanity at the Threshold: AI, Power, and the Potential of Civilization

The system is not broken. The variable is wrong. An 82,000-word investigation into the forces converging beneath the surface of modern civilization — artificial general intelligence, democratic backsliding, labor displacement, resource scarcity, and the quiet consolidation of power by those who control the infrastructure of intelligence. Drawing on 375+ sourced articles, a 36-model quantitative risk ledger tracking institutional degradation in real time, and an original experiment conducted across five AI companies, Humanity at the Threshold asks the question no one in power wants to answer: what happens when the optimization variable shifts from human welfare to profit, and the machines built to serve that variable become smarter than the people it governs? Written from a bed in Kansas by an investigative journalist who has been talking to computers since 1981. Sixteen chapters. Seven appendices. One thesis: change the variable, and the output changes. Read more