A Nightmare Turned Real

Alan Cai

February 10, 2023

The most effective people seamlessly conduct their actions and accomplish tasks without fear of any amazement. With every step of technological advancement taken, it seems as if the central goals undertaken by all individuals, those of self-improvement, principles, and integrity, are gradually being deteriorated. The rise of artificial intelligence is perhaps the final foreseeable milestone in the raging technological advancement and perhaps it will serve as the nail in the coffin for sentient life up until this point.

It is not against the grain for humans to develop tools that assist in the simplicity of life. Sickles were invented to ease harvest and cars were created to accelerate transportation. However, there is a certain threshold at which innovation is detrimental to human civilization. The creation of non-organic intelligent beings is the hair that finally crossed the line.

The most important possession any human has is intelligence. With it, one is able to use the tools given to finish any task or cross the barrier at hand. Without it, individuals would seldom achieve much. The introduction of artificial intelligence is a danger to society because it renders mental capacity worthless and forces human brains to lack purpose. The use of writing is quite diminished when a bot can write higher-quality material in mere seconds. The talent of artistry is negligible when computers are able to generate any form of art in the blink of an eye. Even the power to make robots is ineffective when a chatbot could spit out thousands of lines of code in the time it takes to create a file. From a broader perspective, there is no employment safe from the barrage of capabilities artificial intelligence could produce.

Employment is crucial to the survival of humanity, for one must find purpose in their life to live. By revoking the privilege of working, the neverending growth of civilization must skid to a devastating indefinite halt. The question of artificial intelligence not only replacing jobs but also replacing almost all other aspects of daily life for humans is not an economic question but a social one.

The often-depicted message of robots dominating and taking over the world will not occur with an enormous war or the sudden birth of a sentient artificial being. It has already begun. The idiom of robot takeover lies not in some sort of subjugation of humans, but in the supplanting of the role of humans in the world. For the eternity of the existence of living things on earth, organisms have conducted a strict principle of self-preservation. In creating artificial intelligence, humans have relinquished this fundamental right.