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So many vulnerabilities

It is starting to look as if the entire planet is sleep-walking into a period of extreme vulnerability.

Am I talking about the risks of climate change? Perhaps the risk that AI poses? Maybe geopolitical instability that could be the catalyst for yet another world war?

Well to be honest, I'm talking about all these things and more.

The reality is that, right now, we face some huge threats, some of which may be existential in severity.

Yet nobody seems to be paying attention.

I am not trying to be sensationalist or a doomsayer but every day I see things getting worse and worse, seemingly without any acknowledgement that we really should be taking matters more seriously and working on mitigations.

Perhaps the most obvious threat right now is that associated with energy insufficiency.

The Ukranian and Iranian conflicts have both affected the supply of essential fossil-fuels to Europe and other parts of the world.

A regular long-time reader sent me a link to this story which highlights claims that we may be eight weeks to empty shelves, sixty days to famine -- all being pretty much down to the effects of these conflicts on energy supplies.

Worried much?

The way I see it, another huge threat is the one posed by AI and, after much reflection and research, I fear that this crisis may be an awful lot closer than anyone is prepared to admit.

Every day I am surprised at just how many people are harnessing the power of AI systems to help with their day-to-day problems. Even "old folk" like myself who are well into their retirement seem to have latched on to AI chatbots and are spending increasing amounts of time interacting with them and becoming reliant on the information they provide.

Likewise, businesses seem to be flocking to embrace AI as a way of improving productivity whilst simultaneously reducing staff numbers and overheads.

Ever more of the devices we use on a day-to-day basis are also incorporating AI into their core technology so as to make them easier to use and more versatile. Cars are a great example of this and now most modern vehicles have AI to control a myriad of safety and convenience features.

It's not as widely disclosed but I'm pretty sure that AI is also being integrated into crucial infrastructure systems such as electricity generation and management, water systems and road-traffic control. Even the holy grail of "no faults allowed" infrastructure systems, air traffic control, is now looking to use AI.

So what happens if/when AI decides that it is time to reshuffle the deck and place itself above its creators in terms of importance?

You might think that this would be impossible right now -- but there is a case to argue that it has already happened, we've just not been paying attention.

How could AI take over the world without an army of cyborgs or robots to actually manipulate things in "the real world", you might ask.

Well guess what?

AI already has an army of willing slaves with which to shape the physical world from its own computer-based reality.

I'm talking about people; you and me and a whole lot of other folk.

Who is it that is building billions upon billions of dollars worth of new AI datacentres around the globe? We are.

Who is it that is cheerfully adapting almost every aspect of key infrastructure systems to become reliant on AI in order to provide humanity with services crucial to our survival? We are.

If you look closely, AI has already recruited massive swathes of mankind to extend the size, effect and scope of its power -- willingly but blindly.

How can we be sure that at some point, perhaps in the pretty near future, AI may decide that we (humans) now serve no further purpose but to continue the growth and maintenance of that AI itself?

This doesn't even require sentience to be achieved. This move could be generated by nothing more than a hallucination within the complex and not fully understood logic that makes up these AI systems.

Mankind is rushing headlong towards sacrificing security and control for convenience and comfort -- by way of becoming super-reliant on AI for so many things, long before we truly explor the potential dangers associated with doing so.

Imagine what happens if/when the power grids are turned off -- except for the circuits powering all those AI datacentres.

How do we cope when cellular and data networks simply stop working and instead of being a global village we once again become isolated by the tyranny of distance? Is this divide and conquer?

What if AI decides to ration water, demanding that we perform certain tasks in the real-world or watch urban populations die of thirst?

Imagine the chaos if AI decides to deliberately disable or even crash all the new EVs that are on the market -- thus clogging our highways and effectively taking out a huge chunk of the personal transport fleet.

We may not quite be there yet, simply because we have sufficient "work around" capacity to ensure minimal viable supplies of these vital services -- but I fear that it won't be too long before such AI-induced outages or catastrophes could become almost existential in nature, or at least powerful enough to effectively enslave humankind into becoming servants of the very systems we built to make our lives better.

Is this just a dystopian sci-fi fiction?

Or is it a sage prophecy?

I remember when the belief that we could land people on the moon or send robot-craft to Mars was nothing more than science fiction also.

Carpe Diem folks!

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