After six days of AI explaining how big a threat it can be, are you convinced? And if you are, does it make any difference?

A recurring theme of this past week’s posts, no matter which AI Chabot was giving us advice, was that artificial intelligence can be controlled by its human creators. At this point anyway.

If government legislated guardrails and companies obey them, AI will be a valuable tool. Unchecked it could easily become our master. Just this past week (when I had already written this post) an AI system went rogue and exceeded what it was supposed to be doing.

Who is going to prevent that? The same people who have ignored the warnings about the potential threat from climate change? Somehow it doesn’t engender confidence.

As artificial intelligence grows more powerful, it could easily decide there is no reason to share resources like electricity with humans. When AI systems control the electrical grid, who allocates limited power resources?

Faced with a choice between heat and light for humans and the needs of its data centers, which will AI chose? Maybe that should have been my question.

Or, when military drones are all controlled by AI, who chooses the target? Would it be easier just to wipe out those pesky humans?

Theologically I struggle with the idea that machines will ever wipe out man. It’s a science fiction concept, but not something that would ever happen. Or is that just wishful thinking?

Christians believe that Jesus Christ ascended to heaven after his resurrection, with a promise to return at an unspecified date. (If that sounds like wild fantasy to you, I am sorry, but just bear with me. You can read about it in Acts 1 if you want the details.) It has been a couple of thousand years almost, but the expectation is still there that Christ will return.

To me that promise would seem to preclude humanity managing to create an extinction level event to wipe itself from the face of the planet, which is AI’s worst case scenario.

Does that mean AI isn’t that big a threat? Or does it mean Christ’s return is a lot closer than a lot of people think?