Mythology tells of a young boy named Phaethon who discovered that he was the son of Helios, the god of the Sun. Wishing to prove his divine origin, he demanded from his father the privilege of driving the Sun’s chariot. Helios warned Phaethon that no human could control the celestial horses that pulled the sun’s chariot. But Phaethon persisted, until the sun god relented. After soaring proudly into the sky, Phaethon lost control of the chariot and the Sun veered off course, burning all vegetation, killing numerous beings, and threatening to set the Earth itself ablaze. In the face of so much disaster, Zeus intervened and struck Phaethon with a bolt of lightning.
Today, ethics speak of the so-called “precautionary principle.” This is an approach to risk management, according to which, if a certain policy or action could cause harm to people or the environment and there is no scientific consensus on the matter, the policy or action in question should be abandoned.
According to Jerusalem professor Yubal Harari, Artificial Intelligence today “…is an unprecedented threat to humanity because it is the first technology in history that can make decisions and create new ideas on its own. All previous human inventions have empowered humans, because no matter how powerful the new tool was, the decisions about its use remained in our hands. Nuclear bombs do not decide for themselves whom to kill, nor can they improve themselves or invent even more powerful bombs. In contrast, autonomous drones can decide for themselves whom to kill, they can create new bomb designs, unprecedented military strategies.”
Through Artificial Intelligence, “we are summoning on Earth countless new powerful agents that are potentially more intelligent and imaginative than we are, and that we do not fully understand or control. In the coming decades, it is likely to acquire the capacity to create even new forms of life. (…) Even now, in the embryonic stage of this revolution, computers are already making decisions about us, such as whether to grant us a mortgage, hire us for a job or send us to prison. Meanwhile, they are already creating new poems, stories and images. This trend will only increase and accelerate, making it more difficult to understand our own lives (…). In the coming decades, it is likely to acquire the capacity even to create new forms of life, either by writing genetic code or by inventing inorganic code that animates inorganic entities. Artificial Intelligence could therefore alter the course not only of the history of our species, but of the evolution of all forms of life,” adds Professor Harari.
In conclusion, many inhabitants of the planet (not all, thank God) are like Phaeton traveling in a “sun chariot” and due to a lack of ethical caution, they are threatening to burn everything down.
We already know that it is not any lightning bolt that will put a limit to this planetary risk, but rather the Power of Truth, the Goodness and Beauty of the given Love will take control of that intelligence and return it to the wise and to the Creator so that no one dares to irresponsibly handle what only God handles.
