According to AI, We are Doomed to Mass Extinction

Is all human intelligence just pattern recognition and should it be telling us that we are doomed to mass extinction?

As part of my job, I study trends in the artificial intelligence industry. I have done briefings discussing AI and how it works. From what I can I tell, it is based primarily on nothing more than advanced pattern recognition. If given enough examples and truth sets, AI-driven computers ( the machines in machine learning) are able to determine patterns, and then when they are given new stuff, they are able to match it with  these patterns, and we are calling that learning.

So, is that all that people do to? Do we make judgments based on patterns that we think we recognize? Isn’t that how one predicts the outcome of a future event?

I have also read a few writings on the idea of mass extinctions. Related to pattern recognition, one of the points of studying history seems to be to try and prevent the mistakes of/learn from the past.

There was an article in The Atlantic recently that discussed different theories for the extinction of the dinosaurs. The specifics are not really important, aside from that the bottom line is climate change - and climate change is also possibly responsible for all the other mass extinctions the earth has gone through, and we are possibly going through another climate change that could lead to the next mass extinction which would take out humans.

The ironic part to me is that we think we have the power to stop this climate change. But, shouldn't our intelligence tell us that this is not the case?

Let’s go back and say there have been like five mass extinctions so far. And each one  was caused by a change in climate/atmospheric conditions. What makes us think we can halt the sixth one? The popular reasoning is that we are to blame for the changing climate this time around, so we should be able to make a decision and act to stop it. That’s nice, but who or what is to blame for the five previous mass extinctions? In the case of the dinosaurs, we like to blame an asteroid (The Atlantic piece puts forward a volcano theory, but either way). Could that have been stopped? Probably not by the dinosaurs.

From my view, it seems that these mass extinctions are merely a result of evolution, and we (humans) are just part of all that takes place in these giant patterns that include mass extinctions. Can we help ourselves from ruining the environment? The answer would seem to be “no,” that we are just a vehicle, like an asteroid (or volcanic) eruption that is the agent for this change.

That said, if you believe in the "divine spark" and that some divine power indeed makes humans different than all else in creation, it's possibly to argue that things could turn out differently. I am not saying that this type of belief is wrong, it just doesn't seem to fit in with logic-based scientific models.

So, where does that leave us? There is always hope that the God-based, divine spark model is true, so we should continue to work to reverse/slow the pace of climate change. But, based on our intellect, we also shouldn't be surprised if we fail. On a positive note, if you apply technology adoption curves I typically see in the market to climate change, it will take a lot longer for it to really gain steam that we are initially anticipating. Of course, once it does...is it possible to prepare for a mass extinction?