Or maybe Trump will settle the question by pushing the nuclear button
When I was a wee lad growing up in the sixties, nuclear war,
mutually assured destruction, or MAD, was the apocalypse du jour.
Splitting the atom ended the war and allowed a new world
order to emerge. By the 1960s, that new world included schoolchildren huddled under their
desks, covering their heads with their hands, practicing for the end of the
world.
Some sixty years on, we live in a post-modern world nothing
like that turbulent, transformative, often violent decade. But only in form.
Despite the obvious technological and cultural differences between then and
now, it feels vaguely the same, hiding under our virtual desks, our heads
buried in distraction and division.
Climate Change and Artificial Intelligence: What, Me
Worry?
You have likely heard the AI Cassandras marching up and down
the digital sidewalk with their virtual placards warning that the end is near
(very near), and that we are the seeds of our own destruction. We are
Frankenstein; AI is the monster.
These stark warnings have spilled out as one news story
after another about rogue AI agents breaking free and potentially creating
havoc in the real world where humans live. It is unsettling.
Or is it?
After all, climate Cassandras like me have been warning of
the dangers of climate change for nigh on 20 years now. Just as the
consequences of decades of climate inaction take center stage with greater
frequency and intensity, bearing out what we’ve been warning about all this
time, a new kid on the block comes to steal our existential thunder.
I am being facetious. I find it therapeutic to find humor in
chaos, and these are hilarious times.
Will AI Save Us Before It Kills Us?
There’s a symmetry between AI’s singular race to AGI
(artificial general intelligence) and AGW (anthropogenic global warming). Both
pose a potential existential threat to humanity if we don’t deal with them
urgently and competently. Isn’t that adorable?
As AI expands, its energy and water demands threaten communities, ecosystems, and the
future, much like unchecked manmade climate change. It’s a little ironic that
so many people still hope AI can help solve our energy, climate, and environmental
predicament. That is, as long as neither one takes us down first.
Now, this can feel a tad overwhelming. In fact, if this
doesn’t feel overwhelming, I suggest you aren’t paying attention. I can
understand the desire to hide
under a desk and let all the madness subside. In fact, I climbed out from
under the desk just to write this brief missive, because here’s the thing. We
can wish for a simpler time, a more congenial time, a time when we didn’t feel
pushed and pulled by incompetent, incapable, incoherent leadership, or feel
what little monetary cushion we possess getting sucked up into the greedy hands
of megalomaniacs and narcissists (I’m not naming names. You can guess).
Yes, I know the feeling. But there is no
going back to a time before AI entered our lives, or the growing reality of
climate change, or any of the profusion of modern challenges we face in an
increasingly complex human endeavor.
Complexity does not imply stability, resilience, or wisdom.
I remember talk, way back, of how the threat of nuclear annihilation revealed
how an increasingly complex, technological civilization was quickly
outstripping our wisdom to control it.
And here we are. The world is even more dangerous and
complicated than ever. Is human wisdom tracking that same upward trajectory? At
best, that’s debatable.
What could possibly go wrong? Let’s ask Claude.
Thomas Schueneman https://tdsenvironmentalmedia.com is the founder and managing editor of GlobalWarmingisReal.com, the PlanetWatch Group, and host of the Earthbound podcast. His work appears in Triple Pundit, Slate, Cleantechnia, Planetsave, Earth911, and several other sustainability-focused publications. Tom is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.
