Mark Gomes is a writer and tech executive who uses fiction to ask the questions our systems won’t. His latest novel, Age of Extinction, explores AI as a man-made extinction event—rooted not in rogue machines, but in profit-driven logic. At its core is The Equation—a simple but urgent framework for understanding what it takes for humanity to survive. He’s also the author of The Heavy Butterfly, a work of mystical realism that uses quantum theory and surreal imagery to explore consciousness, identity, and what might lie beyond death. Mark studied the philosophy of science with a focus on Bayesian reasoning but believes deeply that logic means nothing without moral clarity. He lives in Munich, thinks in story, and writes to provoke. His latest is a novel, Age of Extinction looking at the potential impact of AI on society.
Why this book?
I wrote Age of Extinction because the AI conversation felt like pantomime. Doomers shouting 'Skynet,' TechBros promising utopia—and almost no one asking the simplest, most revealing question: who benefits from all this? When Geoffrey Hinton said AI might pose an existential threat, what struck me wasn’t some vision of rogue machines—it was the very human choices being made, right now, in plain sight. That’s what unsettled me. Not the tools, but the people using them. And what they’re building isn’t a future—it’s a power structure.
I started thinking about extinction-level events. Not metaphorically, but literally. Dinosaurs didn’t survive theirs. What if AI is ours—but dressed in progress, not asteroids? That became the lens through which I built the story: step by step, the societal equivalent of a species being pushed out of relevance. But the bigger question was: how do you get anyone to care? You can write essays, give talks—but most people aren’t reading science journals or watching Senate hearings. They’re scrolling. They’re exhausted. So, I turned to fiction. Something that entertains on the surface but leaves something behind once it’s swallowed. This isn’t a story about artificial intelligence. It’s a story about artificial humanity—and what happens when we forget what being human is even for.
Your picture of an AI-driven future is bleak: do you see any way around massive job losses to AI?
Only if we stop pretending this is accidental.
AI is like a loaded gun. It doesn’t pull its own trigger. The danger isn’t in the tool—it’s in the hands that wield it, and the systems that let them get away with it. Right now, companies are quietly shrinking the workforce. Not with mass layoffs—but by not hiring, not training, not investing in people. Politicians know it’s happening, and they look the other way. Why? Because the people losing out don’t fund campaigns. The ones building the AI do. And through all of it, we’re told to 'upskill,' as if the solution is more training videos. It’s not. The problem isn’t that people lack skills—it’s that our system no longer values human contribution unless it’s profitable.
It doesn’t have to be like this. If AI is trained on our work—our words, our art, our decisions—we deserve a stake in its rewards. If companies cut costs by cutting people, then let them pay for the social damage they cause. We tax cigarettes for harming bodies. Why not tax AI for hollowing out livelihoods? People don’t just need jobs. They need purpose, belonging, meaning. Strip those away, and what’s left? A more efficient economy—and a broken society.
I find it difficult to imagine people would accept chips wired into the brain except for major medical conditions. Do you really think it’s likely to become commonplace?
Yes. Not because people want it—but because some will feel they have no choice. In wealthier countries, it’ll be sold as a lifestyle enhancement: faster cognition, seamless access, performance gains. But in poorer parts of the world, it’ll be about survival. If someone offered you a neural chip and, in return, your family could eat for six months—what would you say? That’s not science fiction. That’s economic reality.
And for the people pushing this—governments, tech giants, billionaire visionaries—it’s not really about medical breakthroughs or human progress. It’s about data. In the modern world, data is the core currency. If you own the platforms, the media, the commerce—and then gain access to thoughts themselves—you don’t just predict behaviour. You control it.
That’s the deeper danger. Once enough people accept the chip—willingly or not—it becomes a gateway to everything: education, employment, insurance, even citizenship. Augmentation won’t be about enhancement. It’ll be about eligibility. Yes, it’s dystopian thinking. That’s the point. Age of Extinction isn’t a prophecy—it’s a provocation. I want to force this conversation into the open now, while we still have the option to say no.
What’s next?
I’ve been thinking a lot about time—not just as a sequence, but as a threshold. The instant before the Big Bang was pure quantum possibility. No direction, no outcome—just potential. What if we’re living in something like that now? A moral tipping point where our choices still matter—until they don’t. That’s the idea behind my next novel: quantum agency vs. corporate determinism. A story about who we become when the future isn’t written yet—but a few powerful players are already trying to copyright the ending.
On a more personal level, I’ve been returning to the question that first pulled me into philosophy. Years ago, a friend who was studying anthropology gave me a thought experiment: Imagine someone who spends eight hours on a factory line, eight hours living as a king in VR, and eight hours asleep. Which version of that person is real?
It got under my skin. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That’s when I started reading philosophy—not just metaphysics, but logic. Eventually, I studied the philosophy of science, with a focus on Bayesian logic and the reasoning behind algorithms. Not just how they work—but why they’re built the way they are. What assumptions they carry. What trade-offs they enforce. That matters now more than ever. We’ve become obsessed with the what—what AI can do, what’s possible, what’s next. But we’re losing the why. And if we can’t reclaim that—if we don’t reinsert intent, value, and human judgement into the conversation—we’ll be left with systems that are incredibly powerful and completely unaccountable.
That’s why I built The Equation into Age of Extinction. I wanted something as simple as E=mc² but rooted in human systems. A formula that asks: what does it take for humanity to survive — and to deserve survival? It’s not mysticism. It’s logic. Evolution isn’t just a biological process — it’s a test of coherence between individuals, communities, and the systems they depend on. The Equation became my way of expressing that. Something grounded. Immutable. A lens for seeing what’s working and what’s failing in our world.
So, what’s next for me? Trying to write stories that put the why back on the table.
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