Aquecimento global seguido de uma era glacial catastrófica.
A narração inicial descreve um mundo em que o aquecimento global descontrolado já resultou na morte de centenas de milhões de pessoas e uma perda dramática de terras costeiras. Os que restaram só conseguiram sobreviver (e até mesmo prosperar) por causa do controle populacional drástico e da presença de uma nova 'classe de escravos' de pessoas artificiais.Those were the years after the ice caps had melted because of the greenhouse gases, and the oceans had risen to drown so many cities along all the shorelines of the world. Amsterdam, Venice, New York, forever lost. Millions of people were displaced, climate became chaotic. Hundreds of millions of people starved in poorer countries. Elsewhere a high degree of prosperity survived when most governments in the developed world introduced legal sanctions to strictly license pregnancies. Which is why robots, who were never hungry and did not consume resources beyond that of their first manufacture, were so essential an economic link in the chain mail of society.”
Nas cenas finais, vemos o resultado final da perda das calotas polares; derretimento extremo (e a inundação das cidades) seguido por uma nova era glacial, congelando a água derretida e encapsulando as cidades no gelo.
Quando Aldiss descreveu a visão de Kubrick sobre o final do filme, ele observou que havia três elementos-chave que ele queria preservar a todo custo;
...Global warming, the eventual triumph of the robots and the Blue Fairy.
Kubrick's Story, Spielberg's Film: A.I. Artificial Intelligence
e
According to Brian Aldiss, the directors plan for A.J. emphasized the planetary alterations and eventual extinctions that global warming would gradually cause. The catastrophe would not be a sudden incineration but a steady progress from the chaotic conditions of a hotter planet to a life-destroying ice age.
Kubrick's Story, Spielberg's Film: A.I. Artificial Intelligence