We are facing, perhaps, the largest crisis that we, as a society of humans, have ever faced. I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but AI is coming, whether we want it or not. I want to make it clear that this is not your normal, simplistic, Luddite reaction to world changing technology, but I hope, a general overview of some of the risks we are facing, that we should not, cannot ignore.

So why would I suggest this a crisis? Simple, really. The modern concepts of computers began as tools of calculations, for tabulating data. There was a time when computer technicians only ever spoke to their electronic wards, to each other and to God, and even then in a language that mere mortals like us could barely understand.

That changed as other technologies grew more sophisticate and the introduction of, first, the transistor, followed by the microchip. By the 1970’s things were changing rapidly. One story is that our local brand new mail exchange, built in the ’70’s, was designed to house a computer that would take up a full storey and a half. By the time the building was completed six years later, and the computer installed, it took up less than a single room, that’s how fast things changed. Then came the 1980’s.

Computers went from being huge monolithic power hungry monsters to sitting on a desktop, with a keyboard that any thicky-thicky-dum-dum, even me, could use. By the time I started teaching computers, one of the lines I would use to get the occasionally anxious senior relaxed was “There is more computing power in that box in front of you than was used in the entirety of the Apollo space program, and it is a lot more easy to use.”

What I and so many others didn’t realize was that computers, even then, were fundamentally changing how society works. We can now see those changes, in everything from basic communications, to dating, to working, to whatever you can think of. In essence, we are adapting to the computer, while it appears that we are adapting the computer to us, to our needs.

My evidence is found in the many news stories about how schools are finding difficulty in the numbers of students that are using AI to respond to essay questions, Instead of researching and writing, they are typing the question into an AI engine and copy and pasting answers. They don’t understand the answers, likely don’t bother to edit them, even read through them, so what are they actually learning? It appears though that this is becoming an acceptable practice, and only dealt with when detected, As AI gets more sophisticated, it’s getting harder to detect, so where do the students go? Eventually, down the gurgler and they may take us with them.

Mark Zuckerberg made a very interesting statement when he suggested that AI would, naturally, replace our real friends with AI generated friends. What? Really? Might be okay for a Nigel like him, but what about the rest of us?

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of AI is one we may never have thought of. AI learning models are taking all sorts of books, history, fiction, poetry, every genre you can read and is digitizing them. A Learning model, they call it. Okay, so what? Think about this, what of we no longer have books, no longer have printed records, everything is electronic. We have no more printers, no more book binders, no more retailers, no more public libraries, it’s all done online. What if all our old tomes are gone, burned as being taking up expensive storage space. Hold that thought.

In the interests of road safety, we’ve slowly been rolling out traffic cameras. Governments are responsible for these things, but we’re finding the cameras are now able to actually track a vehicle from its point of origin to a destination perhaps a thousand kilometers away. Same ideas are applying to CCTV cameras in cities, busy retail areas, and coming to other areas as well. A public transport ticket can be easily tracked as well, so no matter where you go, how you get there, your privacy of movement no longer exists.

With all the social media today, anything we do online is easily traceable. Oh sure, VPNs and other suck apps provide some barriers, but they won’t stop every enquiry and when it comes to AI, how good will VPN security be if it takes micro-seconds to hack the barriers? Sooner or later, it won’t matter a damn to anyone with the skills and equipment to see anything and everything we do online. Online privacy is becoming a thing of the past, rapidly.

Binding these things together, we are getting to the heart of the threat to us. When does this intrusive technology stop being intrusive and starts becoming controlling? What if all our knowledge is digitized, all our history is only found electronically? What’s to stop Governments, or tech gurus, from changing that knowledge, that history?

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell, 1984.

That’s the real scary part.