‘Can AI take over the world?’ is one of the most frequently asked questions about AI. But is it really about AI? Or is it about a primal fear that we rarely talk about?
“If hypothetically, AI is designed for DEI, you know, diversity at all costs, it could decide that there’s too many men in power and execute them,” Elon Musk said via a videocall to the World Governments Summit in Dubai last week.
This may sound like the paranoia of a single powerful man. But what if Musk’s DEI fears hold a truth about us all? What if we don’t ask, ‘Can AI take over the world?’ because we fear AI, but because we fear the chaos of no one being in control?
Fear Of Nature: “How Do We Control The Chaos?”
When I talked to media theorist Douglas Rushkoff about his recently republished book, Program Or Be Programmed, he described technology as “an extension of the male, white, colonial fear of women, fear of nature, fear of the moon, emotions and darkness.”
According to Rushkoff, the question that drives people like Musk is: “How do we control the chaos?” They want to prevent the patterns of natural, cyclical, and emotional darkness from happening. And that’s what they have in mind when they build technology: “This idea of controlling nature. Of dominating it.”
When Musk says that a DEI-powered AI might decide to execute powerful men, it’s easy to focus on the ‘male, white, colonial fear of women’ part of Rushkoff’s analysis. But frequently asked questions like ‘Can AI take over the world?’, ‘Can AI become self-aware?’ and ‘Can AI detectors be wrong?’ suggest that “men in power” are not the only ones whose relationship with technology is driven by fear.
‘Can AI Take Over The World?’ Is As Revealing As Dreams
While the questions we ask to AI have become a focal point in research and education – in 2023, ‘prompting’ was even nominated to be the Oxford Word of the Year – we rarely pay attention to the questions we ask about AI.
But studying the questions we ask – and don’t ask – about technology can help us better understand not only AI, but also ourselves.
In his 1955 article, “Man, A Questioning Being”, the German-American neurologist Erwin W. Straus wrote that “questions are as revealing as dreams, or even more so.” And just as dreams reveal more about the dreamer than the course of the dream, questions reveal more about who is asking them than about what they are about.
So, what do the questions we ask about AI tell us about ourselves?
‘Can AI Take Over The World?’ Calls For New Questions
In a previous Forbes article, I share DeepMind Professor Neil Lawrence’s observation that we humans make a lot of shortcuts when trying to understand and communicate with our surroundings. One of them is to anthropomorphize, which means that we think of all other intelligent entities as human – projecting our own intelligence onto them and assuming they have the same motivations as us.
A question like ‘Can AI take over the world?’ is a good example of Lawrence’s point. And it shows how strong the assumption is that there is someone or something that must be in control. If not Elon Musk or another man in power, then a DEI-designed AI. The idea that the world cannot and should not be controlled is simply not an option.
But what if we asked a different kind of question? What if instead of asking, ‘Can AI take over the world?’ we asked: Why do we think of the world as something to be controlled? Where does the need for someone or something to be in power come from? And who would benefit if we let go of our fear of chaos and embraced that which cannot be taken over? Not by AI. Not by Elon Musk. Not by anything or anyone in power.
The Answer To ‘Can AI Take Over The world?’
The answer is no: AI cannot take over the world. There will always be nature, emotions, and darkness that are beyond the control of technology and the people who build technology. But like all other technology, AI can take over the way we think and talk about the world. And to avoid that, we must focus less on the DEI fears of powerful men, and more on the fear that prevents us all from asking powerful questions.
Or as Rushkoff puts it: “Only the person who is aware of the programming is capable of questioning why it’s programmed that way. And then choosing whether or not to submit to that program.” Reframing ‘Can AI take over the world?’ to questions about why we ask the questions about AI that we do is a good place to start building that awareness.
For more videos with Douglas Rushkoff, Neil Lawrence and Nick Bostrom, check out my Big Questions for Big Thinkers series on YouTube. And if you have questions, like ‘Can AI take over the world?’, you would like me to explore, please let me know.
