Are humans anxious about AI? Will AI be the next "nuclear bomb"?

November 20, 2023

Many humans are anxious about artificial intelligence (AI). This is understandable. Many humans fear the unknown. The future of AI is unknown. Chances are that AI will surpass human intelligence, disrupt every economic segment, displace millions of humans from their jobs, and bring many unforeseen changes. AI may be weaponized as every other human technology. For all of these reasons and more, many humans see AI as potentially hazardous. Some equate AI to a new type of nuclear bomb that destroy humanity and end human civilization. 

Below let's take a quick look at the fear of the unknown and how humans cope with it. Just for fun, let's also take a look about how Albert Einstein at the Manhattan Project Let's put some notes together about the  about the development of the nuclear bomb. After all, many humans fear that AI will be the next nuclea bomb, potentially leading to the extinction of humanity.  

Fear of the Unknown.

Many humans fear the unknown. Not knowing what will happen in the future can be emotionally tolling and cognitively painful for humans. The human brain has evolved to be a "prediction machine" deriving pleasure (pain relief) from thinking (processing data) and trying to anticipate the future. This trait (i.e. deriving pleasure from processing data for predictive purposes) explains a great deal of how humans conquered the world. The ability to imagine the future and to communicate stories about it, together with the capacity to collaborate on shared stories and beliefs, explains the evolutionary success of humankind. 

Will AI prove to be another nuclear bomb? No one knows. Humans would like to know. Not knowing is painful. Knowing, or believing that they know, is a pleasant analgesic (pain reliever) for most humans.  Humans will keep thinking (processing information) about this AI issue until they feel that they "know" teh answer. Humans enjoy the analgesic (pain relief) sensation of thinking (processing data) and coming up with predictive models about the future. That is an essential part of human nature. Thinking and trying to anticipate the future are hereditary (genetic) traits in all "standard" or mentally healthy humans. 

It is fine to think and try to predict the future. After all, that cognitive trait helps humanity succeed above all other animals in the animal kingdom. However, smart humans can benefit from accepting that the future is always uncertain. With or without AI, the future of anything and everything in this universe, including the future of humanity, is always unknown and uncertain. 

Coping with Fear: Religion and Science

Fearing the unknown can be emotionally tolling and psychologically painful for humans. Therefore, over time and throughout history, humans have developed different cognitive "technologies" (tools and methods) to deal with the pain of ignorance and cope with the fear of the unknown. Two common techniques are religion and science.

• Religion. To cope with ignorance, early humans invented stories and myths about gods and supernatural powers supposedly in control of nature and influencing reality. Whatever humans did not know or could not understand was tossed to the realm of the gods. Mythology helped humans create a predictive model of the world. Believing that there is something out there (e.g. a "god" or divine supernatural force) that is "in charge", and that can protect humans from peril (pain) is a comforting (and addictive) "hack" for many humans. Mythology allowed humans to develop rules and rituals (religion) to organize societies. To this date, many humans still believe in mythology and follow organized religions. This goes to show the undeniable analgesic power of mythology and religious technology, serving as an analgesic of choice for millennia. 
• Science. Later on, and fairly recently in human history (in the 1600s, less than 500 years ago), humans developed the scientific method as a way to reduce ignorance and address the unknown. Unlike religion, which is faith-based, science is fact-based. Instead of following dogma, science follows verifiable experimentation. Scientists develop theories about how things work, and devise  experiments to test these hypotheses. Experiments must be subject to independent verification (re-testing and validation by others). Experiment by experiment, science allows humans to discover facts and truths about how nature works. The process is very effective in producing knowledge, and is almost single handedly responsible for all the remarkable progress humanity has achieved in the past half millennia. 

Believing in science does not necessarily make a human a non-believer in religious mythology. Many humans keep adherence to both "technologies" to avoid pain and be on the "safe side" if gods really exist. Once humans are programmed to believe in mythology, they fear missing out on the favors and privileges (blessings) supposedly conferred by the gods to obedient believers, and are greedy of gaining those blessings. These humans rationalize that science must be (or may be) a tool facilitated by the gods, or the god, to help humans thrive in this world that they have been programmed to interpret as a battlefield between "good" and "evil". Humans are clever storytelling primates who can rationalize anything.

Some humans are non-believers. Some deny mythology. Some reject both religion and science. Nonetheless, believers and all sorts of non-believers are fundamentally doing the same thing. All of them are coping with the pain of ignorance and the fear of the unknown. In both camps, there are optimists and pessimists.  

• Believers in mythology and religion accept their beliefs by dogmatic intuition (faith) absent any evidence or possibility of empirical validation. Many believers have been programmed since childhood to believe in mythology and to interpret reality as battlefield between "good" and "evil". Many believe that the gods, or the consolidated god, are testing them in said battlefield to decide who will be saved and who will be doomed. Pessimists fear that they are or will be doomed either in this life or in an imaginary afterlife. Optimists believe that they have been chosen or will be chosen for the ultimate pleasure (salvation) in this life or the "next". 
• Some non-believers reject faith-based mythology, preferring evidence-based discovery. Many hold onto the idea (or belief) that nature can be explained by fundamental laws within nature itself absent any supernatural forces. They believe that these laws or principles can be deciphered using mathematical models (axiomatic logical approximations) that can be subject of scientific experimentation for the gathering of evidence and the development of empirical evidence subjec to testable validation. Within non-believers, some are pessimistic and some are optimistic. Some believe that humans are doomed to fail. Some believe that the best is yet to come.

For simplicity's sake, believers can be referred to as Simpletons, and non-believers as Skeptics. When it comes to the fears and concerns about the prospects of AI, Simpletons and Skeptics are all over the place. In both camps, there are pessimists and optimists about AI.  

In general, Simpletons get anxious when they perceive that reality is not going according to the plans or the wishes of the gods, or god, "ruling" the universe. Many Simpletons have been programmed to believe that they are being tested and judged to determine who will be saved and who will be punished either during this life or during an imaginary afterlife. The range of dogmatic beliefs for Simpletons can be as infinite as human imagination because religious mythology does not require any evidence just dogmatic repetition 24/7 reinforced as much as possible every Sunday. In general, Skeptics get anxious when they perceive that reality is not going the way they wish it would go.

The Nuclear Bomb

The nuclear bomb was developed durign the crisis of World War II. Human history tends to show that the greatest inventions and most revolutionary changes occur are prompted by crises. Anyways, in August of 1939, Albert Einstein, who was an Ashkenazi Jew who had fled Nazi Germany to save his life, "tweeted"--just kidding--wrote a letter to inform President Roosevelt that the Nazis were researching nuclear fission with uranium and could produce "extremely powerful bombs". Einstein  urged the United States government to do the same. The President agreed.

The White House and the Department of Defense appointed a physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, as the director of the Manhattan Project, an effort to develop a nuclear bomb before the Nazis. The U.S. government built the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico for secret and expedited atomic bomb research. The project brought together some of the greatest scientific minds from around the world, including Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman, and Leo Szilard, among others. These scientists had to solve numerous theoretical and technical problems, including devising a method for causing a rapid, uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction, which is essential for an atomic explosion. The project focused on two types of atomic bombs: one using uranium-235 and the other using plutonium-239. Isolating these materials in sufficient quantities was a significant challenge. In the end, the team succeeded. The first successful test of a nuclear weapon, codenamed "Trinity," took place on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert. The explosion confirmed that nuclear weapons were viable. Less than a month later, on August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These bombings resulted in immense destruction and loss of life, leading to Japan's surrender and the end of World War II.

The development and use of nuclear weapons raised significant ethical questions, both at the time and subsequently. The enormous destructive power of these weapons and their implications for future conflicts and global security led to widespread debate and concern. After the American nuclear victory in World War II, nuclear proliferation began, leading to a global arms race during the Cold War and ongoing efforts to control and prevent nuclear proliferation. The Manhattan Project remains a subject of intense interest and analysis, representing a pivotal moment in history where scientific innovation had profound and far-reaching consequences. 

Is AI the new nuclear bomb?

Who knows? Maybe. For believers this should not be a problem. If reality is controlled by gods, or by a god, they will decide the "fate" of AI and humanity. For non-believers this may be a bigger headache. If humans are in control of their own reality, developing AI may turn out to be a mistake for humanity. 

Pessimists seem convinced that AI will be detrimental to humanity. Optimists are convinced that AI will be beneficial. Skeptics are sure that there is no way to know what will happen in the future because the future has not been created yet. It is up to humans and all other elements and forces of nature, whatever or whoever they may be, to create the future. 

Will AI be a technology (tool and method) that "saves" humanity or the one that ends it? Will AI continue the pain of life or will it end it once and for all?  No one knows. If there are omniscient gods that know it all, they are not telling anyone in any verifiable way. 

Regardless of how much humans discover about the world, they are always stuck in ignorance subject to the pain of the unknown. This is because the future has not been created yet. There is no fate written on a matrix. Humans live in an evolving, and constantly changing, creatix. 

Creatix.one, AI for everyone.