PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Doomsday Clock is set at 100 seconds to midnight.
"It's really a clock about man's ability to destroy itself and how well are we doing at harnessing technology for good,” says Dr. Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the group that decides the time.
Every year, Bronson asks the team two questions: Is humanity safer or at greater risk this year compared to last year? And this year compared to all other years?
The group takes into consideration nuclear issues, climate change and disruptive technologies, like artificial intelligence and bioscience. But in early 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic hit America, the group's main concern was how information was being used and misused.
"We called out the fact that if there was a global problem or accident, we were going to be really ill-equipped to deal with it," she said.
Bronson noted the difficulties in finding reliable facts and sources, and politicians' use of "false information to advance their agendas."
"The next forty years, we are going to generate more scientific innovation than we have in all of human history," she said, "and perhaps for that reason, or maybe despite of that reason, leaders are denigrating scientists exactly when we really need them."
The clock was created in 1947 for the cover of the first magazine of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. During this time, a nuclear end to the world seemed real. It wasn't until 2007 that the group started really thinking about climate change, because as Bronson says, "It was hard to ignore."
The clock has moved forward and backwards over the years, and even though it's closer to midnight than ever right now, Bronson says she believes there's hope.
"We really do believe we are in a really dangerous time, and there's policies we could put in place to make us safer, and that's in part what we're trying to sound the alarm about."