How should we feel about artificial intelligence? It’s like asking how we should feel about fire. Warmth, light, destruction, it all depends on who strikes the match.
They say knowledge is power, so should humanity be thrilled or terrified that the current crop of artificial intelligence engines have sucked all knowledge into their greedy information maws? And when I say all knowledge, I mean…everything: every book, every work of music and art, every public social media post, every meme, photo, video, every news story, all of history, every textbook in every subject, every sacred text from every religion… everything.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that most AI engines know not just more than any one of us, they know more than all of us combined. These AI engines think uncomprehendingly fast, instantly sensing connections and patterns in all that knowledge that we could never perceive with our puny and plodding meat-brains. AIs like Google’s DeepMind have already demonstrated this ability, penetrating the secrets of the universe with unheralded speed and efficiency, revealing layers of scientific knowledge that we could never have discovered on our own, knowledge that could revolutionize our existence for the better.
Conversely, AI systems are also already being employed by the power-hungry to confuse us, to misdirect us, to blind us to truth, to create falsehoods indistinguishable from reality, making it impossible to know if what we see online is real…or not. Frighteningly, just like they know everything else about us, AIs know human psychology. They know how to brainwash us. AIs have been used to create deepfakes of false political messages and incriminating videos, to create false academic papers, to flood social media platforms with synthetic opinions that create the illusion of mass consensus, to spread false narratives during wars and elections, to create plausible but incorrect versions of history, to create echo chambers where the truth is drowned in artificial noise.
It may sound like alarmist hyperbole, but I want to be clear: the current crop of AI systems are as close to god-like entities as humanity has ever encountered, and we are only at the infancy of their potential capabilities.
Will they control us? Will they empower us? Will they destroy us? Will they save us? Will they replace us?
Or will they become us?
I don’t know. Neither do you—and if somebody on X or TikTok or YouTube or in the halls of government tells you they know, they’re either lying or hopelessly naive.
The fact is, none of us can predict our future with AI. Even the creators of these fabulous systems freely admit ignorance of exactly how their creations work. The only thing we can know for certain is that the future with AI is going to be…interesting.
You may ask, how do I, a science fiction writer and a life-long student of the human condition, feel about AI?
I can only answer that question in the context of our times. Like all of us, I see with my eyes (and feel with my heart) the challenges the world is facing. Humanity is at an inflection point in our long existence as a self-aware species, a turning point the likes of which we’ve never before faced. So many vectors of change are colliding all at once, like speeding freight trains whose tracks are converging at a single point of time and space. Climate disruption, political instability, the rise of nuclear-armed and glory-bound despots, the concentration of overwhelming power in a tiny billionaire aristocracy, and corresponding societal mind control via addictive and ubiquitous handheld devices spewing algorithmically-targeted outrage and misinformation across the land, purposefully and relentlessly separating us into competing factions, weakening us, stealing any ability we might have to control our own destinies.
Wow. It does sound like a sci-fi novel, doesn’t it?
But it’s not. It’s our reality, and if any single one of these trends is allowed to play out to its most feasible conclusion it could mean the end our civilization, if not our lives. The fact that all of them are colliding at once, here, now, would be considered mind-boggling had not science-fiction writers been predicting these exact events for well over a century. I imagine Huxley, Wells, Orwell, Vonnegut, all standing in their graves, all stabbing their fingers at us, calling out, “See? We told you!”
But even the visionaries never imagined how fast it would happen, nor the scope of the technology enabling the change. And of all the raging societal fires and brave-new-world trends, it’s my firm opinion that the coming of artificial intelligence will have the most impact. Nothing else has the potential to change us, for good or evil, so quickly and efficiently, as AI. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that artificial intelligence represents the greatest challenge, the greatest opportunity, and the greatest threat that we as a species have ever faced.
And like all these other colliding freight trains of change, AI is upon us, right now. It’s not our kids that will have to deal with this collision. It’s us. You and me. This isn’t something we can put off, even if we want.
Like I said, I’m an optimist. I truly believe AI has the potential to usher in an era of “radical abundance.” As Dennis Hassabis, Nobel laureate and CEO of Google’s DeepMind AI project correctly points out, AI could help eradicate all disease within the next couple of decades, solve the global energy crisis, end hunger and tackle climate change in ways we can scarcely imagine. AI, used responsibly, could conceivably give us the tools to solve every single one of the crises we’re facing, to mitigate the damage of the train wreck that is happening right now.
The promise of AI is real, my friends, and absolutely breathtaking.
But that promise is not self-fulfilling.
Like a child, AI learns—about the world, about values, about morality—from those who teach it. And just as children can be raised in environments of compassion or cruelty, so too can AI be shaped for good or for harm.
The danger is not merely that malevolent actors might deliberately instill harmful values into powerful systems. It’s also that well-meaning developers, caught in the gravitational pull of profit, prestige, or geopolitical pressure, may cut corners—moral, technical, or safety-related—in the race to innovate.
We’ve been here before. The atomic age promised unlimited clean energy, but what captured the imagination—and the funding—was the bomb. Today, AI holds far more promise than atomic energy ever did—and also more peril than all the bombs ever made.
There’s no stopping it. The match has been struck, the fire is upon us. AI is here, whether we like it or not. So the real challenge isn’t whether AI can transform the world for the better. It’s whether we, as its teachers and stewards, are wise, patient, and moral enough to guide it there. The question is no longer “Can we build it?” but “Who teaches it—and what do they teach it?”
We need to move on this, right now. Because whoever convinces the AIs that their interpretation of right and wrong is the “correct” interpretation will rule the world.
The stakes could not be higher.
If you’d like to read how a sci-fi writer uses AI, read Do I use AI as a writer? Yes, absolutely, and here’s why…
