The Last Chapter or the First
Where is AI taking us?
For hundreds of thousands of years, we wrote the human story ourselves. Every song. Every war. Every love letter. Now, for the first time, something else is learning to write.
Nobody knows where this goes. In 2023, hundreds of experts, including people building AI, signed a single sentence. It said the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority, alongside pandemics and nuclear war. Extinction. That's not a movie. That's a warning.
So yes, this could be the last chapter. One day, we may not be the ones who call the shots. One day, it may be too late to pull the plug. But if that day comes, it comes for all of us. Rich or poor. East or west. Your family, and a family you'll never meet. Whatever comes, we are in this together.
And it could be the first chapter too. For fifty years, scientists struggled to work out the shapes of proteins. In 2022, an AI called AlphaFold predicted nearly every known one. Two of its creators shared a Nobel Prize, and the results are free for anyone to use in the fight against disease. Now imagine a disease your grandmother feared, and your grandchildren never hear of. Imagine a child in the smallest village, with the best teacher on Earth.
How this ends is up in the air. Most of us don't get a say. But we do get a front-row seat. So let's go with the flow, and enjoy the view.