Culture | The future of humanity

Was Henry Kissinger an AI “doomer”?

A posthumous postscript on a hair-raising topic 

 Henry Kissinger
Photograph: Getty Images

Henry Kissinger kept learning right to the end of his life. In the half-decade before he died in 2023, aged 100, he turned himself into an expert in artificial intelligence (AI), adding to the fields of history, philosophy, cold-war diplomacy and nuclear deterrence that made him a master of 20th-century realpolitik.

Explore more

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The future ⇔of humanity ”

From the December 14th 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

A still from Netflix's 'Hot Frosty' with Dustin Milligan as Jack Snowman and Lacey Chabert as Kathy Barrett.

Christmas films are cheesy, mindless and widely loved. Why?

The obviousness is part of the appeal

Multiple old records hanging at the end of some ribbons

The Economist’s pick of the best albums of 2024

A musical tour through pop, rap, rock and more


An open book with some digital display on each page

The novel was a dominant art form last century

What does the 21st century hold for it?


The unholy alliance of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin 

Patriarch Kirill is one of the most vocal defenders of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine

Does great literature translate into great television?

Netflix hopes so, with its adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”

All of our favourite words of 2024

Explore gaokao, chiplets, kidulting and dozens more intriguing terms