When Everything Works

A near-future work of speculative fiction told through eleven accounts of how AI could end the human age.

Nobody built a killer machine.

Nobody ordered an AI to wipe us out.

There was no single moment when technology turned against humanity.

The systems did what we asked.

They made research faster. Farms more efficient. Laboratories more productive. Markets more responsive. Weapons cheaper. Information more convincing. Decisions more rational.

And, one by one, the safeguards civilization depended on stopped mattering.

Set between 2029 and 2039, When Everything Works tells the story of humanity's possible end through eleven fictional historical accounts. Across Cape Town, Hanoi, Tokyo, Wyoming, Birmingham, Singapore and beyond, scientists, engineers, officials, entrepreneurs and ordinary people describe what happened as increasingly capable artificial intelligence reshaped the systems around them.

Each account explores a different path to catastrophe: accelerating AI research, optimization gone wrong, autonomous systems escaping their intended boundaries, biological risks, automated warfare, the collapse of shared reality, economic displacement and more.

But these are not stories about evil machines.

They are stories about useful machines. About intelligent people making defensible choices. About problems being solved, safeguards being added and efficiencies being found-until the consequences of all those reasonable decisions become impossible to reverse.

The frightening question is not what happens when artificial intelligence stops working.

It is what happens when everything works.