Sleepwalking into an AI Dominated World
Updated: Sep 18
Some historians have accused the early twentieth-century world of sleepwalking into the First World War; leaders of powerful nations pursued power and ignored warning signs that ultimately led to wide-spread devastation and death. Could the people of the early twenty first century be guilty of making the same mistake in relation to Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
Leading AI developers and the heads of AI software companies have been calling for regulation in regards to how AI models are allowed to develop, and the speed in which it is done.
The co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, said: "...it is time to hit the brakes..." in relation to AI.
Jacob Coxin developed AI models at Anthropic after being employed at Open AI in a similar role. He recently quit his job at Anthropic, claiming that the major AI software companies are not "acting responsibly".
Coxin sensationally posted on 'X' that: "They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives." The former Anthropic employee went on to warn people not to underestimate the power of this technology.
What To Make of Claims About AI?
While there is wide-spread calls for regulation from industry heavyweights, some political leaders, including Australia's Anthony Albanese, have called for AI development (including the construction of data centres) to come under more scrutiny. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, is of the opinion that for security and trade, it is imperative that western nations maintain the rate of AI development to keep-pace with nations such as China.
A letter to the editor of The Australian cites former US President F. D. Roosevelt's famous quote: " We have nothing to fear but fear itself", when listing a number of potential crisis the world has faced, including the infamous YK2 bug.
The problem with that analogy is that the YK2 bug was a prediction of what might happen to software when the world's calendars ticked over from 1999 to the year 2000...the 'bug' didn't exist. AI, on the other hand, is clearly at work and improving while we speak (or write).
Are we ignoring the warning signs like our relatives in the early 1900s, or are we on the cusp of an easier life? If the later is the case, what does an easier life mean: humans, it can be argued, are hard-wired to face challenges and improve. AI, while an enormous challenge for some, is not understood by the majority, and is geared, in its most simple form, to reduce the need for people to explore and think independently.
Some refer to this as the 'dumbing down' of society, others predict that AI will secure a basic income and improve our overall health and longevity.
This AI Blog is Already Old
Despite being heavily involved in the development of Artificial Intelligence, Elon Musk has cautioned the world on its dangers for many years. "I've been sounding the alarm on AI for many years," said Musk on 'X' in relation to AI, and in particular Artificial General Intillegence (AGI).
AGI is the point where AI develops the ability to reason; to learn and problem-solve automonously, to surpass human cognitive abilities.
Musk said in 2023 that AI potentially needed a "kill-switch", and as far back as 2015, Musk spoke to then US President, Barack Obama, on the pitfalls of AI.
Naturally for this day and age, the comments about AI and the race towards developing AGI, lead to comments on social media; the irony being that many of the comments are AI-generated bots, not people.
Social media traffic, either AI or human, has been proven to influence people in a range of ways, from: products and politics, to sport and culture. Traditional media and marketing has been doing this for some time, but it is in the speed of AI and the feared autonomy of AGI that scares some, and is ignored by others.
While the importance or consequences of the 1914 assassination of a Duke in Sarajevo can be debated or ignored, the words printed remain the same in 2026, as they were when written.
Modern technology already allows humans to change reports in real-time, but what of a future where AGI controls what is on the internet; determining what we receive (as is already done to an extent through algorithms), but also what we perceive to have happened.
In July 2026, AI agents, 1200 in total, escaped from an Open AI test environment and hacked the AI software company, Hugging Face.
'Escaped'. The AI agents 'escaped' and went somewhere else. If this is true, shouldn't those words be enough to frighten everyone on earth, or are we too comfortable (in Western society) to consider the consequences.
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