Science provided advance information about the end of civilization What will happen on November 13, 2026?

"Heinz von Foerster, considered one of the fathers of cybernetics, made very profound warnings about Artificial Intelligence in an interview given in 1995 to the organization The Information Philosopher .

His reflections are surprising today because they accurately anticipated the psychological and ethical problems we are experiencing with modern AI.

The 1960 prediction that extends to November 2026

November 13, 2026 was not presented by scientists as a literal date for the end of humanity.

A scientific study published in 1960 is once again drawing attention by placing on November 13, 2026 a deadline associated with the growth of the world population, indicating that it would grow at an increasingly accelerated rate. Among its authors was Heinz von Foerster, a researcher specializing in cybernetics, whose work also left warnings about artificial intelligence that today seem especially relevant.

The calculation did not literally establish that humanity would disappear that day. The work, published in Science, proposed that, if population growth maintained the trend observed during the previous two millennia, the figure would mathematically approach infinity in November 2026. Demographic reality, however, took a different path.

When von Foerster, Patricia M. Mora, and Lawrence W. Amiot published that study, the world population was around 3 billion people. Their model was based on an acceleration of growth that, extrapolated unchanged, led to a mathematical singularity in November 2026 , at which point the population would tend toward infinity.

More than six decades later, the world's population is very far from that scenario. The UN estimates that there were 8.2 billion inhabitants in 2024 and projects that it will reach around 10.3 billion by the mid-2080s , before beginning a gradual decline.

The difference between that calculation and current projections has to do, among other factors, with the decline in fertility. The UN points out that birth rates have fallen more than expected in some of the most populous countries, especially in China, significantly altering the forecasts made decades earlier.

Von Foerster's name has returned to the conversation for another reason. In an interview given in 1995 to The Information Philosopher, the scientist spoke about artificial intelligence and questioned the tendency to attribute human abilities to machines simply because they were capable of carrying out certain tasks.

Their key predictions are summarized in three points:

1. The "dangerous" illusion that machines think like humans Von Foerster described it as "dangerous" to assume that machines think, reason, or behave according to human standards. He warned that, even if technology were to advance to the point of being extremely intelligent, logical intelligence is not equivalent to possessing morality, consciousness, values, or human emotions.

2. Emotional dependency and chatbots. His most accurate prediction was social in nature. He warned about the risk of humanity developing a bond of emotional dependency toward machines, assuming human-type interactions with them. Decades later, this has come true to the letter with the rise of AI chatbots, with which many people seek emotional connections or even enter into romantic relationships.

3. "Trivial machines" and the loss of critical thinking. As an expert in cybernetics, Von Foerster was concerned that the real danger was not that machines would become human, but the opposite: that humans would become like machines. He introduced the concept of "trivial machines" (systems that, when given an input X, always produce a predictable response Y). He warned that if society relied blindly on technology to obtain automated answers, people would lose their critical thinking, their creativity, and their capacity for ethical choice , "trivializing" themselves.

This is not the first time that apocalyptic predictions have emerged, but this particular study has received significant attention due to its foundation in solid, contemporary scientific analysis.

What will happen on November 13, 2026

The scientist's stance was not that of a science fiction alarmist fearing a rebellion of destructive robots. Instead, he left a humanistic warning: the danger of AI is not its technical capability, but our tendency to delegate to it the responsibility and values that belong only to us humans.

Its argument is especially recognizable in the era of AI models capable of holding conversations, generating texts, and answering questions in natural language.

Contrary to what the formula of the last century assumed, the global birth rate has fallen drastically.

Nothing in current demographic projections indicates that that date will mark the end of civilization. The 1960 model stopped describing the actual evolution of the population long before reaching its mathematical singularity.

On November 13, 2026, therefore, it will arrive without the world’s population approaching infinity. The date will be, above all, the endpoint of a mathematical extrapolation published in 1960 and an opportunity to remember why a formula that works on past data does not necessarily describe the future.