Business Post Contributor
By Nneka Okumazie
Treaties have been useful to global safety, but problems without defined edges often test the strengths of those. It is easier to ban certain chemicals, limit the proliferation of some arms, and prevent some crimes, but when a problem is tied to progress, where it is both important and dangerous, having a treaty may prove difficult.
Climate change is a problem of progress. AI is a problem of progress. Both present dangers to the world beyond anything in the past because they are at the centre of civilization.
The things that drive them cannot just be stopped, because power is behind and in a world of power, profile and pedigree, no nation or corporation would be interested in shedding theirs.
Some harms are already caused by these problems, and in a world where many have said there is no GOD, where many also cannot be told what to do, or many believe nothing is stopping them, then harm would continue without consideration for those at disadvantage.
For a while, people with little or no power may be on the receiving end, until the problem creeps up to everyone, damaging the known structure of the world and how it works.
There is a good amount of fear of GOD that allows people to operate within the bounds of some laws, where it is not just progress, for the sake of it or any direction without consideration for what problems might result. Even without complete faith, having that knowledge was a good check on the powerful and society, against some of the possible excesses.
The 20th century, already comfortable with atheism, had early world wars, the 21st century, without any world wars, has a problem where AI may destroy lives, while people are still alive. The social media problem already showed how much the world can be driven by it and with AI, especially some of the solutions that are looking for problems, the world may enter into an era of wasted existence.
There are several corporations that today are leading globally, and when those in future centuries look back, history would not be kind to them, for their contributions to the destruction of lives, even though they are palatable to a lot of people.
Victims of social media may not be fatalities, but lives, as prey that would have become more, getting ruined. Those of climate change may or may not be fatalities, as prey, but the difference may mean that there could be more of those ahead.
[Psalm 17:12, Like a lion that is greedy of his prey, and as it were a young lion lurking in secret places.]
