AI or Climate Crisis: Which Threat Ends Humanity? Adam McKay and Philip Eubanks Say Neither

Filmmaker Adam McKay and climate advocate Philip Eubanks argue that humanity faces two existential threats: runaway climate change and unregulated artificial intelligence. They point to a summer of record heat, devastating floods in Nepal, and Exxon's public warning of a 3°C temperature rise by 2050 as evidence that the climate crisis is accelerating. At the same time, they warn that AI could pose an extinction-level risk if left in the hands of private interests. The authors trace both dangers to the same root: corporations seeking profit without accountability. They insist that ordinary people have the power to demand regulation and systemic change, rejecting the fatalism that pits one catastrophe against another. The choice, they conclude, is not between AI or climate collapse—it is whether we act collectively to prevent both.