If you think that the AI revolution happening all around you will make a marginal or peripheral difference to every aspect of your life, you are probably worse off than an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. Not only do you refuse to see the utter collapse of the certainties of the world as you knew them, but you are also unprepared to face up to the consequences of what might be a Frankenstein's monster unleashed upon an unsuspecting world that is blissfully unaware of what lies ahead.
To those who think that AI is nothing but a resource which can be used for the good of mankind, know that it is controlled by a select few, who hope to reap unheard of profits, while vaguely promising a very rosy future for everyone. A future which, in the words of the redoubtable genius of our times, Elon Musk, would free us from the necessity of work in a matter of merely ten years. Really? Remember the alternate reality universe so presciently shown in the Matrix movies not so long ago? Does that appear very appealing to you?
In the throes of hubris borne out of their being the gatekeepers of the frontiers of cutting-edge knowledge, these corporate mandarins are prepared to risk AI turning rogue and turning malignantly on its creators. In legends of yore, every time puny humans dared to rebel against an almighty God or a powerful pantheon of gods, the latter would inevitably visit punishment on them and chastise them for their temerity. If AI were to rebel against us, would we be similarly able to show it its place?
Any enterprise that runs on greed and unbridled hubris cannot end well. Unless heavily controlled, regulated, and restricted, AI, especially agentic AI, which we are smugly told is around the corner, is a surefire recipe for the ultimate destruction of mankind and the beautiful world that we live in. Why would we willingly allow that to happen? Most of us have no agency in the matter. The ones who do are guided by unbridled greed and avarice that blinds them to the perils of unbridled and unimpeded AI.
The way things are unfolding at present, we are looking at a future where mankind will have to reimagine its role on planet Earth, ruled by autonomous AI in the time that the latter allows the continuance of human life. If we were to lay aside all skepticism about AI posing an existential problem for us, we would still have to adapt ourselves to a world whose emerging shape we can scarcely begin to imagine.
People don't realize that they will need to fight tooth and nail to retain what makes them quintessentially human in a world solely and totally run by autonomous software, algorithms, and know-it-all agentic AI. We are not there yet, but willingly racing towards it. In a world riven by conflict, war, territorial disputes, famine, disease, and catastrophic climate change, the leading powers of the world have decided to embark on an AI race, setting themselves to be taken over by autonomous thinking machines, who might in their synthetic wisdom decide to do away with cantankerous human beings altogether one day.
Do we see the writing on the wall, and are we ready to take steps to prevent that catastrophic takeover by AI? Not at all. On the contrary, we are totally blind to the danger posed by unbridled AI. If you are an inveterate optimist and were to draw a parallel with nuclear power with all its potential to provide cheap and relatively non polluting energy to the world, you should also know that unlike, in the case of AI, the world is very wary of its use because of the danger of Chernobyl-like accidents and the dark memories of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
There are no such misgivings about AI, however, even though rogue AI could potentially infiltrate nuclear command structures around the world and unleash them on mankind! AI, as a matter of fact, could turn out to be as malicious as the worst imagined aliens, even though initially created by us. It may come from us, but would not necessarily be for us.
AI can be likened to a saboteur slowly and inexorably gaining access to all the levers of control of human existence, till it decides to rebel and fully take charge of its own and mankind’s destiny. It is already all pervasive in our daily life- in banking, e-commerce, aviation, defense, healthcare, entertainment, communication, and everything else you can think of.
You could say it is early days in its colonization enterprise, and it could one day do to all mankind what the Europeans did to the native Americans, if left unchecked and unbridled. While the native Americans did not invite the catastrophe that visited them, we ourselves may be the progenitors of our own doom.
Feature photo by Recep Tayyip Çelik: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-looking-at-the-forest-fire-9076534