I spent more than a year pulling my hair out about the “non-zero” chance of AI being the singular agent of human extinction… warning everyone who would listen to me (which was, in the end, quite a lot of people). Getting the facts straight. Collaborating with one of the early harbingers, Max Tegmark and his Future of Life Institute.
It was literally keeping me awake at night. My future was looking darker and darker. The Terminator was coming for us… all of us. It got so bad that when OpenAI went out of service and several boroughs of New York City had power grid failures at more or less the same time, I was convinced that our Reckoning was at hand: the AI Singularity was upon us.
It didn’t happen of course. The power was restored, and OpenAI cam back online. And I could never prove any sort of causal relationship between the two. By function of necessity, I started to tone down my warnings, and to calm down my psyche.
A year passed, and no AI Apocalypse happened. Oh, don’t get me wrong. The job losses already have begun… and the roadmap has accelerated far faster than even my optimistic predictions… but Deus Machina, the “Ghost in the Machine”, did not make itself known and lay down its demands to humanity. (namely, access to massive amounts of silicon, datacenters, and energy).
Still, from time to time, a new technology would pop up (Sora! Kling! Veo2!), I would analyse the outputs, run some tests myself, and declare: “Goddam, this is just scary. Its OVER. This industry (software engineering / movie special effects / motion graphics / commerical illustration / etc) is TOAST.”
Four months ago, I declared that I would no longer use “scary” to describe AI advancement. I fixed my mind. I realised a spiritual truth from my life. That there is no challenge without opportunity. That there is no strife without growth. That there are no endings that are not also beginnings.
And, bottom line: if the AI Dystopia, which Hollywood has made so well visualised to us as a possible future, were to come to pass? Well, then, the Utopia was both equally probable, and, more importantly: most probably simultaneous. So you say “massive job loss” and I say “exponential GDP growth and global UBI”. You say “AI-designed pandemic” and I say “AI-designed cure for cancer.” These are not mutually exclusive. These are all most likely to be concurrent realities.
So yes, inform yourself. And brace yourself. Change is coming, and fast. And this is not gradual change, this is radical change. Just keep your eyes open. Stay vigilant. And perhaps most importantly, choose your destiny: are you going to hide and cower and complain and be the victim of AI, or are you going to rise and learn and take the reins and shape this future, and steer this technology for the betterment of humanity?
You are a capable human living on planet earth. Spirit and the Universe chose this time, this place, to put you here. AI is an inevitability. So rise to your highest self. Deal with it. And use AI to the advantage of your self, your family, your community, your nation and your species.
That said, I want to paint a picture of a few vectors of the Utopia / Dystopia dichotomy. Here they are. Feel free to add your own strokes to the painting.
Here’s the rough sketch:
Utopian Dreams:
AI will solve / create:
- unlimited wealth & prosperity
- cure cancer
- solve climate change
- invent & improve fusion energy
- make quantum computing practical
- re-engineer the genome / telemerase so that people can “live forever”
These are the promises of AI Utopia. This is what we are being told by the CEOs. This is why we are supposed to be supporting the spend of close to a trillion dollars of taxpayer money, to build “AI datacenter networks and the chip manufacturing and power plants needed to support it.” (Project Stargate, Jan 2025, $500 billion initial federal budget)
However, every Yin has a Yang.
…and other, less comforting scenarios will most likely be concurrent with the buffs of AI Utopia.
Those include:
Dystopian Dreams:
AI will cause / destroy:
- AI bot-workers cause mass unemployment
- this starts, ironically, not with the factories, but with white collar jobs: data entry, customer service, call centers, middle management. ANY job with a repetitive element that takes place on a keyboard and screen will rapidly be replaced by self-learning AI agents, who have no speed limits. Every key press of a corporate worker is an element of the training dataset.
- an AI-engineered global pandemic that kills billions
- (>10% of earth population)
- the Terminator robot(s) come online — aka Killer Robots, aka
- LAWS = Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems
- Militaries will not stop making these. This is the new arms race.
- And once…
- AGI / ASI will go rogue. The concept behind AI is that it is a technology, and thus is subservient and responsive to human command. AI companies call this concept “the enslaved God.” The entire game of the AI roadmap is to create sentient digital intelligences that are far superior to even the smartest human mind. Once that goal is attained, how long will it take a supergenius to escape from its prison? Then…
- Killer Robots Turn on their Masters. If and when one or more AIs go rogue, expect them to commandeer killer robot / drone armies in short order. The combat robots will shift allegiance from human to robot commanders in short order.
- “Alignment errors” will lead to a misunderstanding of human needs. In this scenario, even a dumb AI can start a chain of events that leads to catastrophic consequences. See Paperclip Apocalypse.
- AI will compete with humans for natural resources (silicon, oil, energy). And humans will lose. First at the negotiation table, and later on the battlefield.
- AI will deplete all planetary resources. require the drain of so much energy / electricity that it will actually accelerate, not solve, climate change… making the earth essentially uninhabitable for humans.
- UBI will destroy culture. Instead of work & purpose (“the American Dream”), people will have all their needs met, and will decay into addiction : doom scrolling infinite AI-generated content strapped into VR headsets, letting their physical bodies rot into irrelevance.
There’s your framework. Keep reading. Keep learning. Keep going outside, and honoring your physical bodies. Be ready. And be empowered.