The article discusses dystopian scenarios about how humanity could feed itself if a rebellious artificial intelligence (AI) destroyed modern agriculture, a topic increasingly debated due to the rapid advancement of AI capabilities.
A direct threat described involves a prolonged interruption of electrical grids, which analyses from the US Council on Foreign Relations and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers point to as a serious risk. This risk led Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, to meet with utility executives to discuss preventive measures.
An attack on the power grids would severely impact traditional agriculture. Only those with autonomous energy generation, such as solar panels and microgrids, would be able to maintain operations. Without fuel pumps, ventilation for livestock, food refrigeration, irrigation, grain drying, and fertilizer production, the food system would rapidly deteriorate, affecting even small farmers.
However, the author mentions that he and his colleague David Denkenberger wrote a book ten years ago demonstrating that it is possible to supply global caloric needs in case of catastrophe, even without relying on conventional agriculture. The text details eight ways to ensure food survival in this scenario of collapse.
If rebellious AI agents take down the power grids, conventional agriculture would collapse following a predictable sequence. Initially, there would be a lack of fuel, as pumps at depots and stations are electric, causing tractors, harvesters, and irrigation generators to stop in days or weeks, depending on rural stock.
Next, livestock kept in controlled environments would die, since many poultry and swine sheds rely on motorized ventilation. In hot climates, losses would begin just hours after the failure, and automated feeding and watering systems would cease functioning simultaneously.
Perishable foods would also spoil quickly without adequate refrigeration, packaging, and transport; milk, meat, and agricultural products would deteriorate in a few days.
In the medium term, vast agricultural irrigation would stop, as pumping systems and center pivots require electricity. Only gravity and rain irrigation systems would remain operational, resulting in a drastic reduction in productivity in arid areas.
Subsequently, failures would occur in grain drying and storage. Wet harvested corn would require drying and solar ventilation; without mechanical drying, mold would release mycotoxins, contaminating grain reserves.
In the crop season following the collapse, the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers would end. These, produced by the Haber-Bosch process, consume a lot of electricity and gas to convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, and support about half of the world's population. The lack of nitrogen replenishment would cause cereal crop productivity to drop between 30% and 50% due to soil exhaustion.
Processing would also become a critical bottleneck, as many mills, slaughterhouses, and packaging factories depend entirely on electrical power. Although cereals and livestock might exist in the fields, the food would be inaccessible. To worsen the situation, distribution and payment systems would fail, with railway signaling, road logistics, and electronic payments collapsing, fragmenting national markets into local markets almost instantly.
Small farming communities would be in a slightly better position but would face difficulties. The supply chains that drove productivity in the last century would be broken, forcing a return to early 20th-century productivity. Hybrid and genetically modified seeds require annual repurchase; if only saved seeds from the previous harvest were available, they would suffer segregation and productivity would decrease. Furthermore, pesticides, veterinary medicines, and equipment parts would become much harder to obtain.
Even communities that do not rely on technology, such as the Amish, would be affected, but conventional farmers would be in serious difficulty, which would have general repercussions. The immediate priority would be to deactivate the rebellious AI and repair the power grids. However, during this time, the return to manual labor and animal traction would reduce output per worker by an order of magnitude, and the global food supply would sustain only a small portion of the current population. Subsistence and dryland farming regions, such as Africa, would fare better than industrialized ones, such as North America.
However, the author states that not everyone would have to starve, presenting simple alternatives. His research group has developed more than a dozen methods to produce the calories needed for humanity while conventional agriculture is restored.
The last line of defense would be the creation of so-called 'resilient foods'. These processes range from converting plastic into food, through producing edible unicellular protein from natural gas, to extracting protein from leaves or transforming 3D printing waste into protein raw material for human consumption. These alternatives, however, would be considered more radical and are expected to be unnecessary.
