ASIA
04 September 2026
Safeguarding humanity in the age of AI
Threat and promise of artificial intelligence for us humans!
In her Quarterly Essay, Anna Goldsworthy, has many reflections on artificial intelligence (AI) in the spirit of the essay’s title, “The God we made — the threat and promise of artificial intelligence”.
As she writes, part of us has craved a god that knows everything, and here we’ve created one in the form of AI .
She argues that AI is a rupture that confronts what it means to be human in a world increasingly shaped by AI. We all need to be engaged with AI to get a full sense of its potential and to confront its challenge.
AI has repercussions over absolutely every aspect of human endeavor – work, education and leisure, social and ethical risks.
Economics is an enormous one. So is the future of jobs. But there are other ones. Is AI actually going to spell our demise? If not, what does it actually mean for us? Why do we develop these technologies? What is it that we're actually seeking to achieve?
It is leaping ahead exponentially to the point where it is potentially more intelligent than humans. Can it still be controlled? While it keeps on growing exponentially, it has the advantage that it doesn't need to sleep like we do. We're creatures of time in a way that it's not.
While there are calls to pause AI development until we have time to get our heads around the implications, this is unlikely to happen.
AI is a really different type of technology. Developers say they don't create it, so much as grow it. It is quite frightening that it's inscrutable even to its own makers.
There's a whole field that's been developed at the AI company, Anthropic, called mechanistic interpretability. It seeks to go into the mechanisms of Claude (an AI model) and work out after the fact its processes that lead to a particular decision. The idea that this technology exceeds our own capacity to understand it, and that it improves exponentially is a kind of profound paradigm shift from previous technologies.
The biggest challenge is AI’s social license. There is the potential for it sparking off a revolution of sorts where large chunks of society – not just in this country but across the world – place enormous pressure on governments to shut it down.
At the moment there's an AI bubble, with all the money that's been invested, but sooner or later the mob might respond. And Goldsworthy, doesn’t have huge hope that we're going to be able to manage that.
The Industrial Revolution spawned political movements. Similarly, we should expect significant social disruption eventually from AI in reaction to jobs and inequality. All sorts of jobs will go out the door.
Adapting to AI will take time. It took humanity well over a century to even partially civilise the forces of capitalism which emerged out of the Industrial Revolution. More recently there has been a huge time lag between universal acceptance of social media and the proper consideration of its consequences, like the harm to children. We do need to be much quicker off the mark.
One of AI’s many threats is that we may outsource our thinking to the point that it starts eroding our own personal cognitive capacity. There are already scientific studies which show that the use of AI actually does affect people's brains. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, fears for a future in which even the US president can't make a decision unless he asks the oracle first.
In contrast, Goldsworthy has witnessed an intellectual flourishing through her sons who engage in open-ended generative conversations with AI. Medical research is also flourishing. We must use AI technology to get a sense of its capabilities. If not we're surrendering the conversation to the tech bros in Silicon Valley.
There has also been a concentration of economic and political power in tech moguls like Musk. How can you tame this? Then there is the impact of AI on war which is made easier.
Elon Musk argues there's going to be not just a universal basic income, but a universal high income, and endless abundance for everybody. People in the Philippines, where I am currently based, surely wonder how that abundance might reach them!
Then there are areas of life where we would prefer to see real flesh and blood rather than AI – like live music, creating art, or human care services. And there's something quite intimate about reading a book. It's a window into another person's consciousness.
Goldsworthy believes that human beings will still crave the imperfect and the authentic. Curiously, however, human relationships are now affected as some people are now in romantic relationships with their AIs.
In sum, AI is and will affect our lives in so many ways that it may be beyond our wherewithal to manage it! Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
As she writes, part of us has craved a god that knows everything, and here we’ve created one in the form of AI .
She argues that AI is a rupture that confronts what it means to be human in a world increasingly shaped by AI. We all need to be engaged with AI to get a full sense of its potential and to confront its challenge.
AI has repercussions over absolutely every aspect of human endeavor – work, education and leisure, social and ethical risks.
Economics is an enormous one. So is the future of jobs. But there are other ones. Is AI actually going to spell our demise? If not, what does it actually mean for us? Why do we develop these technologies? What is it that we're actually seeking to achieve?
It is leaping ahead exponentially to the point where it is potentially more intelligent than humans. Can it still be controlled? While it keeps on growing exponentially, it has the advantage that it doesn't need to sleep like we do. We're creatures of time in a way that it's not.
While there are calls to pause AI development until we have time to get our heads around the implications, this is unlikely to happen.
AI is a really different type of technology. Developers say they don't create it, so much as grow it. It is quite frightening that it's inscrutable even to its own makers.
There's a whole field that's been developed at the AI company, Anthropic, called mechanistic interpretability. It seeks to go into the mechanisms of Claude (an AI model) and work out after the fact its processes that lead to a particular decision. The idea that this technology exceeds our own capacity to understand it, and that it improves exponentially is a kind of profound paradigm shift from previous technologies.
The biggest challenge is AI’s social license. There is the potential for it sparking off a revolution of sorts where large chunks of society – not just in this country but across the world – place enormous pressure on governments to shut it down.
At the moment there's an AI bubble, with all the money that's been invested, but sooner or later the mob might respond. And Goldsworthy, doesn’t have huge hope that we're going to be able to manage that.
The Industrial Revolution spawned political movements. Similarly, we should expect significant social disruption eventually from AI in reaction to jobs and inequality. All sorts of jobs will go out the door.
Adapting to AI will take time. It took humanity well over a century to even partially civilise the forces of capitalism which emerged out of the Industrial Revolution. More recently there has been a huge time lag between universal acceptance of social media and the proper consideration of its consequences, like the harm to children. We do need to be much quicker off the mark.
One of AI’s many threats is that we may outsource our thinking to the point that it starts eroding our own personal cognitive capacity. There are already scientific studies which show that the use of AI actually does affect people's brains. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, fears for a future in which even the US president can't make a decision unless he asks the oracle first.
In contrast, Goldsworthy has witnessed an intellectual flourishing through her sons who engage in open-ended generative conversations with AI. Medical research is also flourishing. We must use AI technology to get a sense of its capabilities. If not we're surrendering the conversation to the tech bros in Silicon Valley.
There has also been a concentration of economic and political power in tech moguls like Musk. How can you tame this? Then there is the impact of AI on war which is made easier.
Elon Musk argues there's going to be not just a universal basic income, but a universal high income, and endless abundance for everybody. People in the Philippines, where I am currently based, surely wonder how that abundance might reach them!
Then there are areas of life where we would prefer to see real flesh and blood rather than AI – like live music, creating art, or human care services. And there's something quite intimate about reading a book. It's a window into another person's consciousness.
Goldsworthy believes that human beings will still crave the imperfect and the authentic. Curiously, however, human relationships are now affected as some people are now in romantic relationships with their AIs.
In sum, AI is and will affect our lives in so many ways that it may be beyond our wherewithal to manage it! Welcome to the world of tomorrow!