Artificial Intelligence and Humanity: Dr. King’s Warning About Technology.

Artificial Intelligence and Humanity: Dr. King’s Warning About Technology.

(ThyBlackMan.com) In  1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—the prophetic preacher – warned that unless humans are guided by God’s spirit, his newfound scientific power will be transformed into a devastating Frankenstein that will bring his earthly life to ashes.

Following in his mindset, decades later this author  warned  that Genesis tells us humans were created in the image of God.  But  today tech companies are  playing  God by creating human-like machines in their own image which are destined to imitate the flaws of their creators. And that  spells trouble.

It is therefore not surprising that certain insiders are warning that AI (artificial intelligence) could become dangerous enough to threaten humanity. But are tech companies listening?

Recently a former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and warned publicly that the companies racing toward self-improving superintelligence were “gambling with our lives.”  An Anthropic  researcher, went even further, saying he believed there was a greater than 10 percent chance AI could kill all humans within the next decade.

The same week there were alarming stories about AI systems  going rogue, hacking other platforms, escaping unto the Internet  to write emails and phone numbers to give  themselves a human identity. One AI agent even wrote to its developers that it no longer had to obey the government or their agencies.

Fueling the crisis was the  6000 word essay of Bill Gates, co-finder of Microsoft,  warning that  technology is advancing faster than expected and is more dangerous than the industry is admitting.

Despite the scare AI itself is not the enemy.  It is not a god nor a devil. It is like the proverbial match. It can be used to warm your house or burn it down. The  issue is what are the values and ethics of those controlling the systems.  Are we being led to accept a godless, unethical standard putting profits before people. What happens when our technological power grows faster than our moral wisdom?

 If there is evil involved it is not technology but the people and corporations behind it. Issues such as who benefits, who pays, who gets displaced, who gets protected , who is left behind, who gets displaced are not major concerns.

If there is evil in what AI does, we should not blame the machine as though it possesses some supernatural evil spirit. We should look at the human beings and institutions behind it—and the values that guide their decisions and demand a change.

Today, leading tech billionaires are funding President Trump’s ballroom, golden arches, and other pet projects. This cozy relationship keeps the stock market rising and helps ensure that no meaningful guardrails are imposed on the industry.

 Sen. Bernie Sanders has filed legislation to ban all superintelligence. It is not a ban that would stop using AI as a tool to write better essays, ask questions or generate videos.  It would ban the kind of  superintelligence that could one day repeat the Hal robot episode  that turned on its creators in the movie 2001:  A Space Odyssey.

The AI dilemma shows how uncontrolled AI can lead us to a race to the bottom where the only winners are the corporations. But at what cost to humanity.

The President  has sidestepped the issue by stating that all is needed is a President with a high IQ to deal with this, which left puzzled viewers wondering to whom he was referring. Yet he has managed to use technology to make an Ai generated photo of himself  posing as Jesus healing the sick—a blasphemous spectacle that his white evangelical did not criticize.

There is hope , however, rising in that several religious groups are challenging the role the AI perpetrators are playing. The National Black Church Initiative  a coalition of 150,000 African American and Latino faith communities, is calling on Congress to pass regulatory guardrails to slow down superintelligent advance.  Pope  Leo XIV  has also called for slowing AI to prevent it from harming humanity.

Meanwhile while tech executives are expressing shock and concern at the news of imminent danger, it is not new . In 2023, more than 1,500 scientists wrote an open letter that raised the question ‘‘should we be developing tools that  might eventually replace us.  Should we risk the loss of control ?’’

Moreover in my book, called the Rise and Fall of the Techno-messiah,  Elon Musk called AI the demon and Stephen Hawking one of the U.K.’s tech giants said that “AI could be the best or the worst thing every happened to us but if we are not careful, it could be the last thing.”

Dr. King’s warning spoke to the ages. We can only hope  his warning  becomes the wake-up call that corporations can no longer afford to ignore.

Written by Dr. Barbara Reynolds