The Past Is prologue

I am fortunate to work with brilliant leaders on the cutting edge of medicine, higher education, science, and business. Because of the worlds they inhabit, I have found myself in several deep conversations about artificial intelligence and our future. The conversations are serious, searching and at times even unsettling. Understandably. The questions surrounding AI are no longer confined to science fiction or abstract discussions among technologists. We are all asking increasingly consequential questions about work, human agency, misinformation, warfare, concentration of wealth and power, and whether increasingly capable systems might eventually escape human control.

These thoughts and fears are not new. Perhaps context and history can help provide perspective. Though this may currently be the greatest of our existential crises, it is certainly not the first.

Though this may currently be the greatest of our existential crises, it is certainly not the first.

In 1948, three years after the world witnessed the horror of its latest technology, C. S. Lewis wrote about a similar problem. His essay, “On Living in an Atomic Age,” was written when people were confronting a technology that had demonstrated its capacity to destroy cities and perhaps civilization itself. He wrote:

 "How are we to live in an atomic age?" I am tempted to reply: "Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents."

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented… It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty... the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things-praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds...

This is not to suggest that we passively take whatever is coming. Philosopher Nick Bostrom wrote convincingly about this in the The Fable of the Dragon‑Tyrant.  His point is that something being a seemingly permanent feature of human existence (aging in his case) does not necessarily mean that we should accept it. We have agency. We can learn, ask better questions and challenge rather than simply accept. We can participate in conversations about how AI is used in the workplace and community. We can make our concerns known to the people who actually have decision-making authority and we might ultimately decide to take even stronger stands. And, of course, we can each decide what role AI will play in our own life.

And here is an oft-missed fact: As humans, we have survived 100% of the crises we have ever faced. You have survived 100% of the crises you have ever faced.

You have survived 100% of the crises you have ever faced.

We are not powerless. We are simply not all-powerful. Bostrom's dragon reminds us not to accept suffering merely because it has always been there. Lewis reminds us not to allow the possibility of catastrophe to immobilize us.

We are not powerless. We are simply not all-powerful.

When Lewis wrote in 1948, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the arms race, and decades of nuclear anxiety were still ahead. He was not predicting that everything would be fine. He was asking a different question: What are you going to do with the life you actually have?

Lewis is asking a different question: What are you going to do with the life you actually have?

Here is what I know. Politics, global warming, nuclear disaster, pandemics and now AI are all about life at the global level. And we live life at the local level. Everyday we have opportunities to make the world better. Every day we can show kindness, lend a hand, be empathetic, hug our kids, hold hands with our partner, help a neighbor.

There is a lot here I do not control. That encourages me to double down on what I do.