Technology is advancing faster than we can comprehend. It took our ancestors 2.4 mnyears to purposefully create fire and use it for cooking, but it took us just 66 years to bridge the gap between the Wright Brothers’ first ever flight (which lasted less than a minute) and landing man on the moon — and that was ages ago. Today, humans and AI (together) are pushing technology forward faster than ever.

Among the modern advancements is everybody’s favorite: AI, which has displayed an unprecedented pace of change. While digital assistants and sentient robots sound cool, public concern about the technology’s potential risks is continuously increasing.

And for good reason too: There is a 5% chance that these superintelligent machines may destroy humanity entirely. Members of the tech industry worry that in the future, when AI systems are used to handling aspects ranging from business to warfare, they could begin doing things not just without human instruction, but against human wishes. They could even resist interference or replicate to continue operating. With Agentic AI already on the horizon, we’re starting to sweat under our collars a little bit.

Can our best and brightest stop it? In his book, Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence andthe Problem of Control, Stuart Russell expressed concern for “whether humans can maintain their supremacy and autonomy in a world that includes machines with substantially greater intelligence.” The question of whether or not this can be stopped in itself is a mystery, according to Kevin Gordon, the vice president of AI Technologies at NexOptic: "In its current form, there are many ways researchers and businesses can safeguard users of their applications. In the long term, with true 'superhuman' AI, it's not nearly as clear."

Are we just being dramatic? "Despite our tremendous advances in AI, we don't yet have the resources or technology to develop an all-purpose thinking machine that outperforms humans in more than a few dimensions," Christopher White, the president of NEC Laboratories America, told Lifewire. But just in case, 350 scientists and notable figures of the AI industry signed an open letter last year titled “Mitigating the risk of extinction from [AI] should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

It may not destroy humanity itself, but rather the social rules that govern humanity. Technology is already reshaping human experiences. Despite an abundance of communication platforms and social media apps, people are spending less and less time together. Forming parasocial relationships is as enabled as it will ever be, and now with Companion Bots is providing users with intimacy, comfort, and virtual companionship, who needs to go outside?

Children raised in households with AI assistants are already learning different social rules. “Few people would tolerate a virtual assistant if they had to plead obsequiously each time, ‘Excuse me, Alexa, if it’s not too much trouble, could you kindly tell me what the weather will be today,’” says The Economist’s Dan Williams. “Instead, these devices are designed to answer brusque commands: ‘Alexa: weather!’ And we expect them to obediently respond.” Children observe these interactions and think that this is a normal way to talk to other people.

Forget manners, say goodbye to privacy. AI gains all its knowledge from scraping humandata online, usually without consent. It was already impossible to avoid the surveillance that comes with using online products, and AI, being as information hungry as it is, is only making things worse. The use of biometric data, including voice recognition, also caused concern, to the point where users are hesitant to speak when a call is announced to be recorded.

…And your job. AI has been promised to be able to take over a large number of jobs in different sectors, causing a layoff frenzy that left at least 284k unemployed in the US because of the AI boom since last year. While companies did not publicly link the layoffs to AI replacing workers, most of the job cuts directly followed major investments into AI by those same companies.

Perhaps the technology may skip destroying humans and go straight for the big rock they inhabit instead. Technology plays a significant role in exacerbating environmental degradation. The amount of electricity used in of itself creates a mind-boggling amount of planet-warming emissions. Emissions created from the development and use of AI have also recently been revealed to be 662% higher than Big Tech companies have reported. What happened to their pledge to being eco-warriors ? They decided to buy the certificate instead of earning it.

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