'The woke and anti-woke debate is just a gigantic piece of Freudian displacement!’, says Matthew Syed

He said the debate is distracting humanity from the “big challenges” such as the growth of AI (artificial intelligence).

“We have now developed evermore technologies that confer an existential risk on the species”, he said.

“One that has come up recently is artificial intelligence. Generalised AI could pose a threat to humanity.

“There is also, for example, bacteriological warfare. You could also manufacture, presumably a pathogen with a long incubation period and a very high infection fatality rate.

“If a scientist using genetic sequencing could do that and unleash it, it could kill millions of people within months.

“The democratisation of technology is giving more power to individuals.”

He continued by warning that across the scale of humanity, there will always be “fanatics” who would be willing to commit such actions.

Syed told Cleese that with this in mind, the culture wars are not so much a matter people should be focusing on.

“We’re not giving any attention to this at all”, he said.

“I worry that the woke and anti-woke debate debate is just a gigantic piece of Freudian displacement.

“It’s almost like the big challenge of existential risk is so big that, let’s just have a chat about these completely irrelevant ephemera, and we don’t have to deal with it.”

He continued by suggesting some are “convinced” mankind will not make it to the next century, expressing his concern that the human race is not taking this matter seriously.

“The former astronomer general said, ‘this is mankind’s last century’,” Syed said.

“He wrote a book on the topic. Many of the people that I bump into in academic circles are convinced we won’t make it to the next century, and yet the whole of popular culture is kind of funny videos of people falling over on the internet.

“The political debate is thrashing around in the shallows of decadence and superficiality.”