AI predicts the exact date of a global blackout

Get ready: artificial intelligence (AI) has predicted the day of a worldwide power shutdown, when multiple continents will go dark.

You read that right: AI is talking about a massive power cut affecting several continents at the same time. A user posed a question on an AI platform about the next global blackout and received an alarmingly specific answer.

The algorithm predicted the date to be April 27th, 2027. This leaves us just two years to prepare.

According to AI, the issue will happen because of a "collapse of critical infrastructure, massive cyberattacks, solar storms, or failures in interconnected power grids.”

Should we believe this rather dramatic forecast? Well, this is where things get complicated. AI didn’t give any technical details or supporting evidence to justify its conclusion. It also based its prediction on available historical data and added that the whole thing was “speculative.”

However, the internet takes those things to heart - and AI’s words quickly went viral, with users worryingly discussing the possibility of such a scenario. So let’s dive into the likelihood of a massive power shutdown.

Is a global blackout possible?

Don’t get us wrong - a simultaneous global blackout is theoretically possible, but technically as unlikely as winning the lottery five times in a row, getting struck by lightning during a solar eclipse, or seeing an alien while holding the winning lottery ticket during an eclipse, after being struck by lightning. We’re looking at the odds of less than 1 in 10^477.

For that to happen, the entire world’s power grid would have to suddenly collapse at the same time. That would mean hundreds of independent power systems (all using different technology) across hundreds of countries would fail simultaneously.

Power grids are not isolated systems - they are interconnected, - however, they are designed to prevent simultaneous failures if one power grid shuts down. In addition, there are extensive safety systems in place to detect and swiftly address any issues.

Countries are also constantly working on improving those systems - for example, the Gesellschaft research institute in Ilmenau, Germany, is developing an AI system to automatically detect issues with the grids. The US Department of Energy is also funding $7m of research into using artificial intelligence to both predict potential outages and spot anomalies.

Overall, a global blackout doesn’t seem to be a problem any time soon - but AI’s misinformation might be. These tools don’t actually see the future - rather, they base their predictions on available information and make educated guesses, imagine possible outcomes, or sometimes simply “hallucinate”, giving false or misleading information.