During the last 200 years, science, technology, and medicine have produced amazing advances in human comfort, transportation, disease cures, and communication. The advances result from five technologies: fossil fuels technology introduced in the 18th Century; nuclear technology and social media in the 20th Century; and genetic engineering and artificial intelligence (AI) in the 21st Century. But the incredible speed of technical advances has far outpaced humanity’s social and political ability to safely manage them. It was the dangers of these technologies that caused astrophysicist Stephen Hawking to predict in 2017 that humans would become extinct on planet Earth in 100 years. Find it Here.
NEWS OF THE EARTHLING TRIBE
No. 111
March 2026
MORE ABOUT SOMETHING BIG IS HAPPENING
By
Peter Solomon, PhD
When can we expect to experience the artificial intelligence (AI) Singularity, the point in time when AI intelligence, power, and ability to control the future surpasses that of humans? And how will it affect our lives? Matt Shumer’s Something Big Is Happening. I have experienced wonderful, mysterious, and disturbing interactions with AI both in my personal life and in my work as a novelist. I consider here what the expert say and my own experience.
Futurist author Ray Kurzweil wrote two books about it: The Singularity is Near in 2005 and The Singularity is Nearer in 2024. Kurzweil predicts the Singularity will occur in 2045. He also forecasts that AI will reach human-level intelligence by 2029. I accepted Kurzweil’s 2045 date in a novel I published, 12 Years to AI Singularity, that imagines how humans and AI will share the future.
But the Singularity appears to be much closer than Kurzweil predicted. His timing is challenged by AI expert Matt Shumer in his viral essay Something Big Is Happening posted on X. Shumer argues that human-level intelligence in some fields is already here. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts that “AI models substantially smarter than almost all humans at almost all tasks are on track for 2026 or 2027.” Amodei called AI “the single most serious national security threat we’ve faced in a century, possibly ever.” Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning “Godfather” of AI, quit his job at Google and explained he did it so he could speak freely about the dangers of AI.
We all need to immediately adjust our thinking and planning. Shumer’s essay is a wake-up call to all white-collar professionals: They need to prepare for the possibility of losing their present job to AI. Shumer’s essay focuses on the issues of how AI will take over many of the functions of jobs such as software engineering, law, medicine, finance, writing, and customer service. But jobs in the creative industries are also threatened: novelists, screenwriters, artists, actors, and musicians.
No. 110
March 2026
What Do Builders Owe the Future? | with Dr. Peter Solomon
By
Peter Solomon, PhD
What happens when the person sounding the alarm is the one who built the technology?
60 years of building. Then a warning. Dr. Peter Solomon earned his PhD from Columbia, filed 20 patents, and spun three companies out of government-funded research — one sold for $24 million, another turned your smartphone into a radiation detector for the Department of Defense. Now, at 85, he’s writing novels to warn his 12 grandchildren that the tools he spent a lifetime creating might be the ones that end everything. We sit down with Peter to explore the tension between a man at peace with his career and terrified about the future — and whether fiction can reach people where data and policy papers can’t.
No. 109
March 2026
How To Ensure a Harmonious Future With AI
By
Peter Solomon, PhD
Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents human civilization with many spectacular benefits as well as the potential for significant dangers. AI can increase productivity, efficiency, creativity and research results in many industries. In medicine, AI can enhance the accuracy of diagnoses, design individualized treatments, and accelerate drug development. But AI will lead to significant job losses and could reduce privacy. And AI agents have encouraged human suicide, lied to users, and have been employed to create scams as well as deep fakes, including photos and videos. Several tragic cases of delusional interaction have been reported by The New York Times in “Trapped in a ChatGPT Spiral.”
No. 108
March 2026
How a Torrent of Technology Is Changing Human Communication and Idea Creation
By
Peter Solomon, PhD
The most profound changes to human civilization have resulted from our ability to develop ideas. And the creation of ideas is intimately linked to our ability to communicate them.
It took humans 100,000 years to go from inventing speech to writing, to printing, and the ability to communicate ideas over long distances—radio, telegraph, telephone, and shortwave. But in just over a single lifetime, humans have developed a veritable torrent of technology for communication and idea creation: television, computers, smartphones, the Internet, the World Wide Web, social media, and artificial intelligence.
Has this torrent overwhelmed our ability to integrate, control, and adapt to these rapid changes? Or will these and other technologies, such as nuclear weapons and genetic engineering, lead to human extinction on Earth by 2117—as predicted by astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in 2017?
No. 107
February 2026
The Future of Artificial Intelligence and Humanity
By
Peter Solomon, PhD
In 2014, the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking predicted that “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” In 2023, Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning godfather of AI, warned, “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.” In recent surveys of AI experts on the future of AI, half believe there is a 10 percent chance of catastrophic outcomes as bad as human extinction. So, what is the current status of AI and what can we expect in the future?In 2014, the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking predicted that “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” In 2023, Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning godfather of AI, warned, “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.” In recent surveys of AI experts on the future of AI, half believe there is a 10 percent chance of catastrophic outcomes as bad as human extinction. So, what is the current status of AI and what can we expect in the future?
No. 106
November 2025
Exploring Humanity’s Future Through Fiction:
Peter Solomon’s 100 Years to Extinction
By
Jordan Whitman
In a world increasingly dominated by technology and facing a cascade of existential threats, it can be difficult for the average reader to grasp the accurate scale of the challenges ahead. Physicist, entrepreneur, and award-winning STEM author Peter Solomon tackles this problem in his new novel, 100 Years to Extinction: The Tyranny of Technology and the Fight for a Better Future. Through a compelling blend of fiction and scientific projection, Solomon engages audiences with urgent questions about climate change, artificial intelligence, pandemics, and genetic engineering.
No. 105
October 2025
A Century to Change:
Peter Solomon’s Urgent Call for Humanity in 100 Years to Extinction
By
Avery Sinclair
In a world increasingly dominated by technological innovation and facing existential threats from climate change, artificial intelligence, pandemics, and genetic engineering, few authors address these topics with the same narrative approach as Peter Solomon. Physicist, entrepreneur, educator, and STEM advocate, Solomon has spent decades navigating the frontiers of science, technology, and clean-energy innovation. His latest book, 100 Years to Extinction: The Tyranny of Technology and the Fight for a Better Future, combines scientific insight with fiction to confront humanity with the stark reality of its potential self-destruction—and, crucially, the possibility of change.
No. 104
September 2025
100 YEARS TO EXTINCTION:
The Tyranny of Technology and the Fight for a Better Future
My novel is published
By
Peter Solomon
September has been a very exciting month. 100 YEARS TO EXTINCTION is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and many more book stores. And I have done many radio and podcast interviews. I hope readers and listeners, young and old, will find my message a wake-up call. All humans must see themselves as members of the Earthling Tribe to MAKE EARTH GREAT AGAIN.
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s made this dire warning in 2017: humans will be extinct on Planet Earth in 100 years. Believing that Hawking’s warning may come true, my novel’s three Generation Z protagonists make a promise to do at least one thing to save humanity from extinction.
I have put the first chapter of the novel on the 100 Years Book page. The promise is described below.
No. 103
August 2025
Do we humans and all life on Earth,
have a right to a worldwide healthy environment?
The Polluter-Industrial Complex
By Barbara Ellis
~ 13 companies make huge profits from the destruction of the rainforests.
According to Olivia Lai at earth.org, “As of 2021, forests still cover about 31% of the world’s land area, but they are disappearing at an alarming rate. Since 1990, the world lost 1.3 million square kilometres of forest due to deforestation… which threaten every inhabitant of the planet: human, animal, and plant.”
~ 20 countries profit most from ocean plastic pollution.
Vibor Cipan, (viborc.com), writes that research published in Science Advances “suggests that more than 1000 rivers account for a staggering 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean.”
~ US’s EPA wants to dismantle controls on emissions of greenhouse gases.
Zack Colman, writing for POLITICO, July 23, 2025: “The Trump administration plans to argue that federal law does not require agencies to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, in a move designed to derail virtually all U.S. limits on climate pollution.” These include “carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases [that] threaten human health and welfare.”
No. 102
July 2025
GLOBAL WARMING AND THE FASHION INDUSTRY
By Peter Solomon and Barbara Ellis
Are we members of the Earthling Tribe, or are we a disparate group of humans, each entitled to get ahead personally, whatever damage this does to the Planet?
Increased use of coal and petroleum over the last two centuries has led to a 60% increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide. That molecule absorbs heat that is trying to escape Earth and sends half of it back. The result today is an increase of global temperatures of 1.6°C. Predictions for 2100 are as large as a 4°C increase.
About 15% of the new atmospheric CO2 comes from transportation. The generation of electricity in fossil fuel power plants contributes about 30%.
No. 101
June 2025
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) WROTE A SONG TO WARN US ABOUT THE DANGERS OF MISUSE OF THAT AND OTHER TECHNOLOGIES
By Peter Solomon
I was blown away when I listened for the first time to our song called Turn The Tide about saving Planet Earth from technology misuse. It was created with Artificial Intelligence (AI).
My website, 100YearsToExtinction.com, my media posts, and my upcoming novel, 100 Years To Extinction, warn about the dangerous consequences of misused modern technology, AI among them. Stephen Hawking, who predicted in 2017 that humans would be extinct on Planet Earth in 100 Years, said this: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” But our song is one of the many awesome wonders that drive the lightning speed advance of AI. We want its wonders, but we must guard against its dangers.
SUBSCRIBE TO NEWS OF THE EARTHLING TRIBE
Please use the contact form if you would like to make a comment or have a suggestion for saving planet earth that you would like include in the newsletter
THE NEWS
AUGUST 1, 2025, EDEN MAGAZINE PUBLISHES “THE TYRANNY OF TECHNOLOGY” BY PETER SOLOMON
JULY 28th, 2025: A CONVERSATION WITH DR. PETER SOLOMON HOSTED BY THE CONNECTICUT LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS.
Solomon presented a PowerPoint seminar “The Tyranny of Technology” about the dangers of modern technology for the CTLCV Action Hour. The recorded session can be seen on YouTube at HERE
JULY 11, 2025, WABC TALK RADIO “THE Dr. Sky EXPERIENCE” DOES ONE HOUR INTERVIEW WITH PETER SOLOMON ON “100 YEARS TO EXTINCTION” AND “THE TYRANNY OF TECHNOLOGY”
Radio/TV personality, Steve Kates / Dr. Sky, does world class common sense interviews from the world of Astronomy, Space, Aviation, and Weather. with scientists, astronauts, celebrity guests, as well as those that talk about American exceptionalism and our freedoms. https://wabcradio.com/podcast/the-dr-sky-experience/. Listen to the podcast here.
MAY 28, 2025, MUNN AVENUE PRESS TO PUBLISH “100 YEARS TO EXTINCTION”
An agreement was signed with Munn Avenue Press to format, upload, and optimize the novel 100 Years to Extinction for sale, as well as providing publicity for the book.
JANUARY 1, 2025, BLACK HAWK LITERARY & PORTFOLIO AGENCY, LLC TO REPRESENT PETER SOLOMON AND “100 YEARS TO EXTINCTION”
Black Hawk Literary Agency is proud to represent Dr. Peter Solomon and his delightful sci fi novel, 100 YEARS TO EXTINCTION. It asks the question posed by Stephen Hawking, will humanity be extinct by 2117? We love the synopsis: how three young cousins work to make a Mission to Mars happen, and use the same technology advances to correct some of the frightening problems on Earth. This page-turner uses hard science, new political ideas, and humor. It is a reason to get involved and a great read, we promise!
Jan L. Kardys, CEO, Barbara Ellis, VP, Black Hawk Literary Agency
JANUARY, 2022 – PETER SOLOMON’S NOVEL:
I began writing the novel, 100 Years to Extinction, as a wakeup call to young people about the dangers to human civilization from modern technologies. The pace of technology development has far outrun our society’s ability to safely regulate and control their many dangerous consequences.. I was inspired by astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s 2017 prediction that humans will not exist on Planet Earth in 100 years. As a scientist, I worried Hawking was being optimistic. I agree with Greta Thunberg – our house is on fire! And it’s not just from global warming.
…