<div class="header-image"></div> <table class="table-header"> <thead> <tr> <th colspan="2"></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>2025-11-24</td> <td style="text-align: right;"><a href="About.md" class="internal-link">About</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> # How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AI  I've been hearing End-of-the-World scenarios since I was a kid. I suppose it began in church, learning about Revelations and the end-times. I went to a Protestant United Church, however, and Revelations wasn't really taken too seriously there. We didn't learn very much about it, and I wouldn't until later when I decided to read the Bible on my own in high school. Movies depicting the end of the world and post-apocalyptic nightmares were endless though: the Mad Max series, The Planet of the Apes movies, The Night of the Comet, The Omega Man... These movies were all really fun, and the idea was fascinating. The different depictions of what the world might be like were always intriguing, but what really fascinated me was the story of how the world ended up like that. Was it something beyond anyone's control, like a pathogen of some kind? Or did man destroy himself through war or some mad-scientist's experimentations? Perhaps some of this was a direct result of growing up in the 80s, during the cold war between Russia and the US. I can remember watching movies from decades prior that instructed us all to hide under our desks in the event of nuclear catastrophe.  *Produced in the 50s, I can remember watching this with my Grade 5 class in the 80s at the height of the cold war.* Later, as I grew older, society's dependency on computers began to grow. By the time 1999 came along, everyone became aware of a computer bug that was going to disrupt everything, causing all our infrastructure to crumble around us. Planes were going to fall from the sky, all financial markets were going to crash, and communications and electrical grids would all fail. This was the Y2K bug, caused by people's annoying habit of referring to the year by the last two digits of the date. Of course this failed to materialise too. January 1 of 2000 went on like any other, albeit with most people walking around with severe hangovers. Then, pandemics threatened to destroy civilisation, beginning with Saars in 2003. Not long after that was H1N1, and H5N1 (The bird flu virus). Of course Covid eventually came 15 years after that, which did shut down the world for a couple of years. But Covid turned out to be an overreaction that just wouldn't stop. I'm not going to get into the mud too deeply on that; [I've written about it already](../Blog/2025-02-04%20Civil%20Liberties%20Covid%20and%20Societal%20Failures.md). What I will add to that post here, though, is that the world was captured by doomerism for 2 years. Canada was mandating social distancing and forcing businesses to limit the number of customers they could serve *even after vaccinating 90% of the population*. The "New Normal" was going to go on forever. But here we are now, with that whole mess remaining only as a bad memory and financial hardship. In 2011, Harold Camping started a billboard campaign to warn the public of the coming Christian Rapture, that was to [occur on May 21, 2011](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna40885541). After that day came and went, he revised his prediction to be [October 21 of that same year](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13516796). After this date, Harold Camping later acknowledged his mistake, and admitted that while the end of the world apocalypse will surely arrive, the exact timing will never be known. In 2012 the world became obsessed with the Mayan calendar after word spread that it stopped in 2012 with no explanation. Some suspected this was an end-of-the world prediction. A [really bad movie](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190080/) was even made to depict this event. These modern times certainly don't have a monopoly on apocalyptic visions. A century ago, back in 1910, there was an hysteria that the world was going to end when the [earth passed through the tail of Halley's comet](https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-comet-panic-of-1910-revisited/). Snake-oil salesmen made small fortunes selling elixirs that would protect people from cyanogen gas poisoning. There were pills and even "anti-comet umbrellas." Even now the predictions continue. One enduring prediction has been global warming, now renamed to climate change. In the 1970s acid-rain was going to cause water shortages and ecological collapse. In 2001, Al Gore made the documentary *An Inconvenient Truth* focusing on predictions that [were largely exaggerated](https://abcnews.go.com/US/TenWays/story?id=3719791&page=1). One claim was that the Arctic was going to be ice-free by 2013. Sea levels were to rise by 20 feet causing coastal cities to be completely submerged. In 2019 the "[12 years to save the planet](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-only-have-12-years-to-stop-climate-change/2019/01/14/42704374-15d1-11e9-ab79-30cd4f7926f2_story.html)" slogan was popularized by activists, and later exacerbated by the overly-online culture caused by everyone staying at home during the pandemic. The climate-hysteria continues to evolve and contradict itself. Throughout the 80s and 90s, paper products were discontinued in order to save trees and protect the rainforest. Paper grocery bags, for example, were replaced with plastic bags for this reason. But from 2018-2021 it was imperative to replace plastic with paper again for things like straws, disposable cups and lids, and yes, [grocery bags](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/environment/waste-management/recycling/recycle/shopping_bags_regulation_factsheet.pdf). To any observer, it seems like these drives are purely preformative exercises to occupy the minds of the public. For people who remember the 80s and 90s, this all feels like utter nonsense. Other examples of this was the [overpopulation scare](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/) from previous decades now turning into a fear of *shrinking* population with low birthrates. In the 1990s GMOs (genetically modified organisms and foods) were the source of widespread public fear for health reasons, corporate interference in farmers' businesses, and ending all life on earth. The scare of "Terminator Seeds" which produced plants that couldn't reproduce, were theorised to be able to cross contaminate with other crops, and eventually cause all plants to become sterile. David Suzuki and Holly Dressel talked about this and more in their co-written book [From Naked Ape To Superspecies](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/248757.From_Naked_Ape_to_Superspecies). From 1999 to 2004 several countries in the EU banned GMOs completely. The "Frankenfoods" scare even caused 3rd world countries to [reject aid in the face of famines](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2002/oct/17/gm.famine1). In the end, however, GMOs substantially increased yields, reduced crop losses, and improved food security in several regions—especially in developing countries facing chronic food shortages and periodic famines. And now, AI is the latest doomer craze aiming to cause public hysteria. This goes beyond the [massive job-loss which is at least plausible](../Blog/2025-10-26%20AI%20Robotics%20and%20Visions%20of%20the%20Future.md#Bringing%20it%20All%20Together), if not likely. No, this predicts a mass extinction event that would wipe out humanity. There are groups petitioning governments around the world to stop AI research because of this. And while it may be possible that some unforeseen consequences of the technology may arise, I seriously doubt that those can be more stark than the obvious result of utilising nuclear weapons. Moreover, the purpose of nuclear weapons is *only* to cause destruction. AI's purpose, apart from producing videos of cats doing aerobics, is to *benefit* mankind in all sorts of ways. The hysteria of AI seems to be spawned from too many Hollywood movies, which, by the way, only exist because it's interesting to imagine dystopia and war. Human beings are wired to look for danger. When we were no more than animals struggling to survive on the plains of Africa, hiding in the grasses from predators, we *had* to assume danger was just beyond our line of sight. This was safer than ignoring what we couldn't see because life-threatening danger often *was* just out of sight. We evolved from the early humans that actually looked for danger, even when there wasn't any real evidence of it, because the ones who didn't look died out, and their lineage ended with them. We survived because it was safer to be paranoid and assume there was danger everywhere. These traits have largely stayed with us. We haven't had to keep a constant vigil for predators for, really, only a few hundred years, but we evolved to believe that danger is everywhere. It's a part of us still. I believe that, when faced with the prospect of radical change, a primal fear is triggered in many people. This fear will then spread, especially when it's our leaders who are the ones expressing it. This isn't to say that caution isn't warranted, or that we haven't had some technological blunders in the past. Especially when new technologies haven't been properly tested. And nuclear war was, and still is, a pressing danger. Social media was something that probably should have waited a few decades to ease people into it. And yes, the prospect of anyone being able to produce an AI video of anyone saying or doing anything at all is surely going to cause some havoc. There will come a time of adjustment that will cause much unrest and chaos. But in the end, it could be the beginning of a new era of plenty. We are making strides in human longevity that could see us living to 150 years and longer. Robots could relieve us of manual labour, providing an abundance that frees us to pursue more creative endeavours. If properly planned, money might become obsolete in this new age, no longer being a driving force of progress. In all the pessimism surrounding technology, there's room for optimism. As a species, we could truly be on the cusp of something great. Pessimists get most of the attention because we are wired to look for it. But there are groups that see our past, and what we've built. We started as nothing more than animals fighting to survive in the wilderness, and yet, over generations, we built everything we have and created an entire civilization! These groups of techno-optimists are excited to see what will come. I am too.  *I selected this clip mostly because of the infectious enthusiasm of the panelists.* I can understand wanting to be a little cautious with powerful technologies like AI. There will come a time where our entire economic structure will need to be rethought, or it will face utter collapse. If human labour is completely replaced by AI and robots overnight, it could very well be disastrous. At the very least it will be a rough transition for a couple of decades. Ideally, this would have to happen gradually, with UBI introduced at first, paid for by companies who want to replace their workforce by robots, or AI. But if we can make it to the other side of this transition, we could be entering a time of human prosperity that has never before existed. I'll end this with an episode of The Last Invention. This is the final episode of the series, but I would encourage you to listen to [all 8 episodes](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-last-invention/id1839942885). This episode focuses on the optimists, while the series looks at the history of AI, and the gamut of perspectives surrounding it. <iframe allow="autoplay *; encrypted-media *; fullscreen *; clipboard-write" frameborder="0" height="175" style="max-width:660px;overflow:hidden;border-radius:10px;" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-accelerationists/id1839942885?i=1000737576528"></iframe> This technology is coming—and sooner rather than later. In truth, it’s already here, advancing day after day. It cannot be ignored, and no amount of doomerism will make it go away. We have to face it. Yet when I look out my window, walk the streets of my city, or drive to the grocery store, and when I think about what this same land looked like two-thousand-plus years ago, I’m reminded how profoundly humankind has benefited from the technologies we ourselves created. Yes, upheaval lies ahead. But such periods have always passed, and greatness has always followed. The only question is how long and how severe the coming disruption will be. That’s up to us.