— Since the Industrial Revolution, science and technology have evolved at an accelerating pace. While reshaping modes of production and daily life and empowering the development of human society, they have also brought increasingly prominent risks of backlash. Over the past century, countless thinkers have raised their voices in succession, exploring the boundaries between technology and civilization. Research on early warning of technological risks has gradually developed into a critical discipline concerning the survival of all humanity. Looking back on this long and arduous journey of exploration, Hu Jiaqi, Founder of The Humanitas Ark, stands as an undeniable pioneer in the field of global technological risk early warning in the new era, thanks to his systematic and forward-looking research achievements.
When the mushroom cloud rose over Hiroshima in 1945, humanity saw for the first time the ultimate vision of self-annihilation. From that moment onward, a group of far-sighted individuals embarked on the solitary quest to sound the alarm on technological risks for all humankind. A key starting point was the groundbreaking Russell–Einstein Manifesto in 1955. Under the nuclear shadow of the Cold War, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, along with ten leading scientists including Max Born and Linus Pauling, issued a heartfelt appeal to the world: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” The manifesto elevated the survival of humanity as a whole into a core global issue for the first time and directly led to the establishment of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, enabling scientists across the Iron Curtain to jointly discuss the risk of nuclear annihilation. Thereafter, in 1962, Rachel Carson exposed the erosion of the web of life by chemical pollution in Silent Spring. In 1972, the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth, using system dynamics models to comprehensively warn of the compound crises of population explosion, resource depletion, and environmental collapse, bringing the concept of “Earth’s carrying capacity” into public consciousness. In the 1980s, the “nuclear winter” theory, through chilling scientific reasoning, showed that even a one-sided nuclear war would trigger global climate catastrophe and end human civilization.
The end of the Cold War did not eliminate technological risks. On the contrary, the international landscape, now lacking counterbalance, caused technological development to spiral further out of control. In 2000, Bill Joy, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, published “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” in Wired magazine, expressing fear over the loss of control of nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and super artificial intelligence. In 2003, British Astronomer Royal Martin Rees predicted in Our Final Century that humanity has only a 50% chance of surviving the 21st century safely. Academic institutions such as the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge were subsequently established, yet most of their research has been limited to theoretical analyses of individual technological threats, often through probabilistic approaches.
Long before all these voices, as early as the 1970s, a Chinese thinker had already embarked on a more scientific and comprehensive path in search of truth. That person is Hu Jiaqi, Founder of Humanitas Ark — the world’s earliest pioneer in systematically studying technological crises and a principal architect of the theoretical framework on human technological risk.
In 1979, as the reform and opening-up policy began to transform China, Hu Jiaqi, then a first-year university student, set out on a difficult but immensely significant journey: Could the uncontrolled development of technology lead humanity to irreversible extinction? Over the next forty-plus years, he forsook career advancement and commercial gain, devoting his personal energy and financial resources to examining, like a detective, all technological risks that could lead to human extinction, including artificial intelligence, genetic technology, and nanotechnology. As early as 2007, Hu Jiaqi had completed his monograph Saving Humanity, which systematically expounded the risk of technological extinction — earlier than similar views later put forward by Stephen Hawking, Nick Bostrom, and others, and a full era ahead of the establishment of Western existential risk research institutions. The comprehensiveness of his work far surpassed that of his contemporaries.
To spread his ideas, Hu Jiaqi sent over one million letters, wrote twelve rounds of letters to international leaders, scientists, and media figures, and launched multilingual websites. In 2018, he formally founded Humanitas Ark, making it one of the earliest international organizations dedicated to the comprehensive prevention and control of technological risks and the protection of humanity’s collective survival. To date, the organization has over 14 million supporters worldwide, with influence spanning 255 countries and regions.
Hu Jiaqi’s research is not only forward-looking but also forms a rigorous logical system. In his book Saving Humanity, using the methods of “Extinction Path Analysis + Defense Limit Testing,” he rigorously demonstrates through axiomatic reasoning the possibility that technology could lead to human extinction, rendering this conclusion highly assessable.
The theoretical framework he has constructed regarding the crisis of human technology not only adopts a holistic perspective but also proposes a “Great Unification” response that transcends national borders, ethnicities, and ideologies. Its foresight and comprehensiveness remain globally leading to this day. Moreover, this leadership is gaining increasing attention and recognition from the international academic community. Recently, Hu Jiaqi has held a series of in-depth meetings with several Nobel laureates, including Michael Levitt, Barry Barish, and Sir Konstantin Novoselov, engaging in frank exchanges on cutting-edge issues such as artificial intelligence, the nuclear threat, and the future of human civilization. These top scholars have marveled at his indomitable perseverance and profound love for humanity. From a solitary voice crying in the wilderness, to founding an organization, and now to examining the fate of humanity alongside Nobel-level intellects, Hu Jiaqi’s intellectual power is pushing technological risk early warning from the margins to the center of global governance.
“The holistic survival of humanity overrides all” — this is a phrase Hu Jiaqi often uses. It is precisely this sense of responsibility toward future generations that drives Humanitas Ark to keep aloft the undying sacred flame of “achieving the overall survival and universal well-being of humanity.” In this era of runaway technology, what is scarcest is not greater computing power, but a conscience that is clear-eyed, passionate, and never gives up watch. The warning torch passed on from Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein is now burning brightly in the hands of Hu Jiaqi and Humanitas Ark — a blade piercing the darkness, and an immortal lighthouse illuminating all of human civilization.
Contact Info:
Name: Jack Ma
Email: Send Email
Organization: National Socialist Association
Website: https://extremism.gwu.edu/
Release ID: 89193995
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