One of the AI authorities I follow closely is Dr Andrej Karpathy..
I love his insights and the way he oftentimes predicts the way AI technology is headed- perhaps what I love most about the famed futurist is that he’s very positive on AI’s impact on our lives (quite a number of AI gurus make very pessimistic predictions).
Now, I was recently on his website reading his the-sky-is-quickening post (you can go to https://lifearchitect.ai/ if you’d love to savor his articles and papers) and a part that really captured my attention is the point where he compares human’s acceptance of AI to Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ iconic stages-of-grief process.
If this is new to you, Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross argued that mankind go through 5 emotional stages when griefing (after losing a loved one) in her popular book “On Death and Dying”.
And now it appears humans living in this fast evolving AI age will have to grief first- and heal- before they can accept that AI is here to stay (according to Dr Andrej Karpathy).
Is AI a threat to humans? Connection between AI and Grief
Just to bring you up to speed, Swiss-American psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote that we undergo 5 main stages of grieving once a dear one leaves us..
To be clear, it’s certain that the majority of humanity is struggling to accept that AI is here- and ready to take over our lives….
After all, humans hate change so much…we abhor anything that’s pushing us out of our routine(and comfort zone, I dare say).
So we are now going through an unprecedented mental, psychological, emotional, and spiritual journey as AI continues to become mainstream in our world.
The only difference is that while Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross traditional model has 5 mourning stages, the AI ‘grieving process’ has been modified to have 7 stages.
Here’s is a chart I grabbed from the article explaining the stages:
SOURCE: https://lifearchitect.ai/the-sky-is-quickening/
What’s most worrying about the above is that Many people (from workers to businesspeople remain stuck at the very first step: Stage 1!
Even more concerning (according to Dr. Karpathy) is that some people might never fully accept the reality of AI changing their lives (without guidance of personalized AI tools!). Imagine that!
Therefore, the answer to the question “Is AI a threat to humans?” is more or less personal..It is a threat depending on the stage you’re at in the framework as adapted from Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
In other words, those that are quick to ‘finish’ mourning will realize that AI has more opportunities for them as soon as they’re done with crying while the remainder may one way or the other be rendered desolate!
That being so, it is important for you to be swift and find ways of exploiting the myriad opportunities AI will bring as the age of artificial general intelligence(AGI)draws ever so near.
Is artificial intelligence a threat to humans?
Remember AGI has superintelligence(it will in all likelihood outperform our minds by vast proportions) and is forecast to change the world dramatically.
Putting that in mind, we can all agree that yes, AI is on course to transform our lives in ways only a few could have thought a couple of years ago.
Think of loss of millions of jobs (white collar jobs such as writing have been the first to go be taken over) to AI controlling nuclear weaponry….it looks extremely scary for those who are still in the mourning process.
So i urge you to research AI deeply (and AI tools such as ChatGPT 4.0 can help you do that exhaustively) and take steps to help you integrate AI into what you do (or to start a side hustle)- otherwise, AI will bypass you and you’ll be one of those that will never come to full acceptance.
John Gitahi is an AI Enthusiast and apart from educating the general masses on AI tools runs a not-for-profit (AI Know Zone Foundation) that teaches young people in Kenya (soon to go Africa-wide) essential AI skills and then connects them to digital jobs (needing AI skills).
His website is: https://johngitahi.co.ke/