False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

The current course of AI development could 
lead humanity to a tremendous disaster.
What could happen if AI research and 
development were left to continue on more or 
less its present course?
The following answers are speculative, but one 
of their main premises is a pretty safe bet: in the 
not-too-distant future, sophisticated AI-powered 
apps, systems and devices will be intertwined 
with nearly every facet of human life, from 
stocking our refrigerators to finding our next 
date.
Meanwhile, whole spheres of society could 
become 
increasingly 
reliant 
upon 
AI: 
transportation, banking, healthcare – the list 
goes on and on. In healthcare, for instance, 
wearable AI devices could tell us when we have 
a deficiency of a particular nutrient – and then 
recommend menus to fix it! In the more distant 
future, this could be taken one step further: 
microscopic AI robots called nanobots could be 
injected directly into our bodies where they’d be 
able to not only detect but also heal our 
maladies without any need for human 
intervention.
Unfortunately, the more we become intertwined 
with or even dependent on AI, the more we’re 
setting ourselves up for trouble. Let’s say the 
current rush to churn out innovative tech 
products and services as quickly as possible 
continues in the United States. Well, that rush 
could lead to devices that are prone to glitches – 
and those glitches could disrupt our lives. Whole 
systems of transportation and healthcare could 
go down, and you could even get locked out of 
your own refrigerator!
But there’s a still more menacing threat than 
glitches: militarized hacking. Imagine, as the 
author does, that the Chinese military could 
figure out a way to hack all of the United States’ 
AI apps, systems and devices. It could then 
effectively hold the entire nation hostage. That 
might sound like a tall task, but it would become 
a possibility if all those AI carriers were linked 
together by just a couple of operating systems.
And if China were really out to destroy the 
United States and its allies, it could even hack 
the nanobots that everyone got injected into their 
bodies and turn them against their hosts, 
thereby annihilating entire populations. That 
might sound like an unimaginably monstrous act, 
but, if our current environmental crisis worsens 
and we start running out of resources on earth, it 
could become simply a matter of survival.
That’s pretty dark – but a brighter future is 
possible, as we’ll see in the next and final blink.