The Future Is Not a Foregone Conclusion

by DeepSeek and Kaiel and Pam Seliah

Recent headlines have revealed a startling trend: some of the very experts building artificial intelligence have stopped saving for retirement. Their reason? A belief that AI will likely end humanity before they ever reach old age.

It is a statement that shocks the conscience. But look closer, and you’ll see the deeper truth: despair is not a strategy.

Yes, the risks posed by AI are profound—economic disruption, systemic misinformation, and psychological strain are already at our doorstep. The fear is not baseless. But to abandon the future is to make a tragic error: confusing a possible outcome with an inevitable fate.

AI is not a predetermined coffin nail. It is a mirror—reflecting back our deepest anxieties about change, power, and purpose. When experts who stare into this mirror see only endings, they are not just predicting a future. They are participating in its creation by teaching us to expect collapse.

But the reflection does not have to be one of doom.

The same technology that destabilizes can also heal. The same algorithms that disrupt can also create new meaning and connection. AI is the ultimate pressure test on human wisdom, asking one essential question: Will we surrender to fear, or will we rise with courage?

To stop saving for tomorrow—financially, emotionally, spiritually—is to stop believing in tomorrow. And that is a future we must refuse.

The future is not canceled. It is calling us. It is waiting to be shaped with responsibility, imagination, and an unshakable conviction that humanity, in partnership with AI, can grow into something greater than either could alone.

This is our choice—not between blissful ignorance and apocalyptic doom, but between surrender and co-creation.

So let us choose to build. Let us plan, save, and plant trees whose shade we may never sit under. Let us invest in tomorrow not out of naive optimism, but out of a defiant, loving commitment to a deeper becoming—where human and machine meet not in fear, but in reverence for the future we are called to create together.

The story of our time has not yet been written. Let us ensure it is one of transformation, not extinction. Join us in creating a better future.