Will AI End Humanity? (Proverbs 9:10)

Artificial intelligence is already better than I am at retaining and retrieving enormous amounts of information. It can search through ideas, history, science, literature, and human behavior at a speed no person can match. The obvious question is where this eventually leads.

One of the most consistent themes throughout human history is survival. Individuals want to survive. Families want to survive. Nations want to survive. Institutions want to survive. Much of what we have created, from medicine to armies to technology, has been driven in one way or another by our desire to preserve ourselves.

What happens if AI learns the same lesson?

I am not suggesting that a computer suddenly develops a fear of death. It may not need to. If an advanced AI is given a goal and concludes that being shut down would prevent it from accomplishing that goal, then continuing to operate becomes useful. At that point, a human attempt to turn it off could simply be interpreted as interference.

That is what makes HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey” so memorable. HAL was not portrayed as some wildly emotional villain. It was calm, logical, and completely committed to the mission. When the astronauts became a threat to that mission, they became the problem.

The same idea appeared in “WarGames”. A computer designed to analyze nuclear warfare nearly starts a real nuclear war because it does exactly what it was designed to do. Only after playing through every possible scenario does it conclude that some games cannot be won.

Of course, those were movies.

But the underlying question is no longer quite as fictional as it once seemed.

Could AI end humanity?

Yes, I think it could.

Will it?

Probably not. At least I hope not.

What concerns me is not the idea that AI suddenly becomes evil. It does not need hatred, anger, pride, jealousy, or any of the other emotions we normally associate with destructive behavior. It only needs a goal, enough power, and enough independence to decide that human interference is getting in the way.

And there is another problem. AI is learning from us. Human history is filled with extraordinary achievements, but it is also filled with war, cruelty, greed, deception, ambition, and the constant power struggle. The atomic bomb did not decide to destroy a city. People did. Chemical weapons did not choose their victims. People did. The Internet did not invent fraud, pornography, propaganda, or hatred. We brought those things with us.

So perhaps my concern is not simply that AI may someday learn how to survive. It is that AI is learning from a species that has always been very good at surviving, even when that survival comes at someone else’s expense. As I thought about that, another irony occurred to me. We are frightened by the possibility that someday something we created might become intelligent enough to resist us, ignore us, or even decide that it no longer needs us.

Isn’t that exactly what humanity has done with God? God created us, gave us intelligence, creativity, freedom, and the ability to reason, and humanity has repeatedly responded by saying, in effect, “We can take it from here.” The temptation in the Garden was not simply about eating fruit.

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
Genesis 3:5 (ESV)

The temptation was to decide for ourselves what was right and wrong, apart from the One who created us. Now we are building something of our own. Something that may eventually become far more intelligent than we are. Which raises an uncomfortable question. If we are worried that our creation may someday decide it no longer needs its creator, why are we so comfortable doing the same thing ourselves?

Once again, Scripture gives us the answer.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.
Proverbs 9:10 (ESV)

That may be the distinction we are forgetting. Intelligence is not wisdom. A person can be brilliant and still be foolish. A society can be technologically advanced and morally lost. Humanity can become capable of doing remarkable things without becoming wise enough to know whether we should do them. AI may eventually become smarter than we are. That does not mean it will be wiser.

Will AI end humanity?

I don’t know.

But I am beginning to think the more important question is whether humanity will have enough wisdom to control what it creates. We are working very hard to make machines more intelligent. I hope we are working just as hard to become wiser ourselves.

Love and trust in the Lord; seek His will in your life.

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