Credit, Kindness Julio Rojas
If a position opened up as a specialist in the end of the world, Chilean Julio Rojas, 61, would be the perfect candidate.
His fictional podcast Patient 63 debuted in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, and quickly became a phenomenon. The story of a time traveler on a mission to save the world from a deadly virus was very similar to the reality of the time.
His series became Spotify's most listened to podcast in Latin America. In 2021, its Portuguese version was released, dubbed and starring Mel Lisboa and Seu Jorge. The following year, the English version appeared, starring Oscar winner Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac.
Since then, Rojas has continued to repeat his success with his books and podcasts, imagining the future with a high dose of realism: AIs that get out of control, societies in which work and money cease to exist and children who are raised by machines.
BBC News Mundo (the BBC's Spanish-language service) spoke with the writer during the Hay Festival Arequipa 2026, in Peru, about his latest book, El Problema del Fin del Mundo ("The problem of the end of the world", in literal translation) and his audio series Almanaque 2035 — two different looks at the future that take a deep (and, at times, ironic) look at current technology.
Credit, Sebastián Utreras
BBC News Mundo - Your recent work revolves around imagining the future, sometimes closer, sometimes more distant, sometimes more optimistic, sometimes catastrophic.
But as I read your texts, I imagined that you are actually more obsessed with the present. It's not that?
Julio Rojas - Totally.
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I believe we are surrounded by seed events that are invisible, tiny. They don't generate headlines, but if someone follows this path, they realize that they are inflection points that will completely shape the future.
The idea that the future is a system separate from the present is strange.
We are definitely part of the future and the foundations for this establishment have already been created. Therefore, it is necessary to write about the current moment in order to write science fiction.
BBC News Mundo - In your stories, almost everything is a matter of information. In The Problem of the End of the World, there are people who know that the world will end and those who don't know...
Rojas - Well, finally, this is the great abyss.
For thousands of years, there was a physical gulf, people who could carry a weight and people who couldn't; then, a gender gap, economic inequalities...
But the real great abyss of the future is that someone will know how to use a technology and obtain relevant information, cross-reference data that is impossible for others to understand and someone will be a victim of this privileged information. This is what is already happening.
In The Problem of the End of the World, for example, we observe a strong discrepancy between the people who manage information and those who are left wandering in a kind of desert of false information and ignorance regarding the future. This happens in all three stories.
BBC News Mundo - In recent months, real concern has emerged about the consequences of artificial intelligence, which seem to have dimensions that few of us anticipated.
For you, who have been thinking and writing for years about this technological rollercoaster we find ourselves on and what a society controlled by machines will look like, what scares you about AI?
Rojas - Everything about artificial intelligence scares me.
We are playing with a type of fire that cannot be controlled and the consequences are immense.
With nuclear weapons and viruses, for example, there is a consensus that they are dangerous. We are afraid of them and this protects us. And there is also legislation about it.
Only someone very crazy could launch nuclear bombs or open a class 5 biosafety laboratory and release a virus.
The problem with AI is that it is seductive. It is a technology that attracts us, that makes an empathetic capture, that makes us fall in love. We literally fell in love with her.
You don't know how many people write to me saying they have significant relationships with an AI. This is a symptom and a sign of human loneliness.
We are in a very complex world and the only way to escape this fierce, violent, predatory, hypercapitalist and extractive complexity is refuge. But, as no one takes refuge from us, there are AIs to do this.
I can then tell her, "I had a bad day." "Come on, Julio, why did you have a bad day? Tell me."
This siren song is much more dangerous, as it embraces us, makes us believe in the emptiness of our own existence and can destroy us.
Credit, SUMA|Penguin Libros
BBC News Mundo - How could it destroy us?
Rojas - In two ways.
One is for a group of humans to intentionally mismanage AI, as we are already seeing in the case of companies making AI military drones, which is completely immoral and unwise.
The second has nothing to do with AI wanting to destroy us on its own, as shown in Hollywood cinema. But, basically, it can destroy us due to a poorly followed order, a misaligned interpretation.
And they're both pretty stupid.
But what terrifies me most is not that AI will take over. It's just that, perhaps, we will all be entranced by technology forever, in a kind of infinite scroll of pleasure.
BBC News Mundo - Almanaque 2035 is almost a scientific report. Everything in this future that you imagine is part of an investigation into the abyss towards which current science is heading.
Rojas - Yes, I had several notebooks on topics that I asked scientists about, I used AI to provide me with advanced studies and, for a long time, I subscribed to scientific journals.
From all of this, I took away what we were talking about: seed moments. And I chose the ones that I considered could be most transformative.
People who listen to Almanac 2035 end up with a very strange feeling, which is what I want to put on the table:
"Wait a minute. This is not what will come unexpectedly, from one moment to the next. No, this is happening now. Now is the time."
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BBC News Mundo - Which of these scientific advances surprised you the most?
Rojas - Well, the topic of longevity is still important.
Over the generations, we grow older. Someone 62 looks 62, someone 87 looks 87, and someone 32 looks 32.
And it's strange that someone who's 87 has a boyfriend or girlfriend who's 22.
But is it weird because of your body? To your mind? To your experience? Why? What makes this disturbing?
Then the giant questions arise: what happens if everyone looks the same? What happens if someone who is 87 or 122 looks like someone who is 38 and dates someone who is 36?
We are talking about the body becoming homogeneous, becoming a standard product, a commodity. And the consequences are enormous and monstrous.
Your grandmother can give herself, as a gift for her 87th birthday, a longevity treatment with CRISPR-Cas9, nanorobots, telomere lengthening and gene editing.
And suddenly, she appears as a very attractive woman, who puts the whole family in tension (laughs).
Credit, Emisor Audiolibros
BBC News Mundo - This topic of longevity seems to interest many billionaires and powerful people, doesn't it? Last year, a microphone captured a private conversation between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin and they talked about immortality...
Rojas - Immortality is the great theme of humanity.
The first story of humanity is the Epic of Gilgamesh, a quest for longevity. This should make it clear to us that we are a species obsessed with overcoming death.
Many of the things that are happening now due to artificial intelligence disruptions (personalized medicine, organoids) are related to a group of multimillionaires who are immensely afraid of death.
They will be the first immortals. A complete dystopia.
BBC News Mundo - In The Problem of the End of the World, you count three possible ends of the world.
The first two are more or less intuitive: an artificial superintelligence that ends everything and a virus that threatens humanity. But, in the third story, the world ends with an "ontological shock".
What would be an ontological shock?
Rojas - When we talk about the end of the world, people usually talk about meteorites, a crisis of confidence, viruses, artificial intelligence, a supertsunami...
But I want to tell a little story.
Three years ago, I was hired as a scriptwriter to go in search of a lost photo. It was a photo of a UFO used in a poster for the iconic TV series The X-Files (1993-2018), starring Gillian Anderson.
I went to Zurich [Switzerland], in search of the person who supposedly took that photo, an old man called Billy Meier. I interviewed him and he told me that the photo had come into the hands of the Vatican and then the CIA [the United States Central Intelligence Agency].
I then looked for people who were related to the photo. Regardless of whether you believe in extraterrestrial life or not, the big question is: if there is information, false or true, why is it not released?
The Washington lawyers I talked to, the Vatican people I talked to, they all told me this is due to "ontological shock."
According to them, we are not prepared, as a species, for our fundamental concept that we are alone in the universe to be overturned.
If it really happened — like in the film Arrival (2016), when an inverted egg arrives and is placed in front of several cities — people would stop paying their bills, working, studying, loving and would start throwing everything out the windows.
Something catastrophic could happen, without us even knowing who is behind that door. That doesn't matter. What matters is that we were alone in the universe and now we are no longer.
Well, this is the ontological shock and I wanted to put it in a very realistic way, like a thesis from a repentant Silicon Valley technoguru.
Credit, AFP via Getty Images
BBC News Mundo - Not all of your stories are catastrophic. There are people in these futures who value the things of their time, who perhaps look at the past with nostalgia, without it necessarily seeming better to them.
What reasons do we have left to be optimistic about the future?
Rojas - I believe that it is necessary to think about good futures. Otherwise, we will go straight to the cliff.
All the news regarding the future cannot be about the possibility of AI destroying us, the possibility of nuclear war, the possibility of a dead-end technocracy. We need to have some light at the end of the tunnel.
Fiction creates a space for us to at least observe a path.
BBC News Mundo - You, as a writer, have become an important voice for thinking about the future, beyond literature and entertainment. You even worked as a consultant for technology companies...
Rojas - It's just that what's happening in relation to the future is very strange...
I just returned from China, from the Beijing robotics fair. Science fiction argued for a long time that there would be humanoid robots.
Now, what will be the function of a humanoid robot inside a house? What happens if the robot discovers something inappropriate in that house? Does he report it? Call the police?
There are many ethical and philosophical problems regarding technology. Therefore, many companies want to know what science fiction says about where the future will go.
This indicates that we are in an age of perplexity. The philosophers must be very pleased, as everyone has started philosophizing at the table again.
I believe this is the only big news of the moment, that we are thinking again about what it means to be a collaborative human species.
Credit, Getty Images
BBC News Mundo - Is the discussion about what the future will be like in the right hands?
Rojas - The surprising thing is that, in the West, we let a handful of people completely manage our future.
In China, it is different because there is more open source, it is more collaborative, but it is also controlled, in this case, by the State.
Our future, our lives and the design of the next generations are controlled by a group of people we can count on our hands. And none of them are characterized by sensibility or a small ego.
They are very childish, egoic, excessive. Marvel movie villain boys.
Now, the good thing about this catastrophe is that they believe they can keep the fire in a box. But in fact, we are two years away from everyone being able to have their own artificial intelligence, without paying anything to any of their corporations.
Of course, if you want the easy way, you pay 20 dollars [R$110] and that's it. But the fire cannot be kept restricted and everyone will have their torch.
BBC News Mundo - We have become accustomed to seeing science fiction written by Europeans or in foreign films. You're making science fiction in the Global South...
Rojas - What happens is that the consequences of a technological rupture do not admit borders, but rather perspectives.
I observe the phenomenon from its edge, from the south.
Science fiction is not restricted to any type of territory, as we will all experience the future, whether we want to or not.
It's worth reflecting on this in the south because perhaps we can offer better answers than those inside the fishbowl.
BBC News Mundo - Finally, Julio, how do you avoid feeling like you're becoming a doomsday conspiratorial madman?
Rojas - [laughs]. I think I'm definitely going crazy.
Now, I'm glad this is happening, because we are in a kind of complete homogenization of thought.
You see, there are people who use conspiracy to validate horrible, hateful speeches, a kind of anti-collective stance and terror of others. The typical far-right prepper who builds a bunker and saves himself with his own weapons.
I also don't agree with the flat-earther anti-vaccines, which for me is suspect because, when science falls, critical thinking also falls.
But, without a doubt, in a world where we cannot know what is true and what is a lie, we must doubt, because doubt will save us.
I am on the side of the doubter.
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