Science Fiction writers have spent the past century predicting our doom at the hands of technology. Whether we simply blow ourselves up with weapons that are too powerful or we are enslaved by machines we can no longer control, there has been no shortage of apocalyptic verbiage suggesting that scientists, whether their intentions be inherently evil or tragically misguided, are laying the groundwork for humanity’s eventual demise.

Of course, the new and wonderful technology of the Internet makes doomscrolling our deaths much easier, which has been a bane for the immature and weak among us. The relatively benign night terrors that afflicted earlier generations have now been replaced by a well-developed infrastructure of alarmists who have created lucrative (and typically taxpayer-financed) careers for themselves by convincing an incredible number of people—both nationally and worldwide—that the air we breathe, the sun warming our earth, the water we drink, the food we eat, the fossil fuels powering our economy, the free speech of others, and the foundational moral beliefs that have guided the civilized world for thousands of years are going to kill us all. To say that many people now live in a state of constant and emotionally draining terror is not overstating the mental health crisis inflicted on humanity by those who gain power and profit from frightening the emotionally fragile.

Rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are the new bright, shiny bogeyman hiding under our beds. Although we should, as with any new technology, realize there will be trade-offs and unexpected problems that arise, wholesale panic might be premature. 

We should not, of course, immediately strive to build armies of killer robots because every new weapons technology has had a nasty habit of being far worse than we could have imagined, but one can easily foresee circumstances where “thinking” machines will help prevent human errors in fields such as medicine, aviation, construction, energy development, weather forecasting, and a host of other applications. The key to the wise use of AI will be avoiding our all-too-human tendency to overpromise and underdeliver, particularly when anxious investors are scrambling for profits and willing to believe the most outrageous lies about the potential of new products. Pushing untested and unreliable AI applications to market will be a threat to health and safety, although liability lawyers will probably enjoy enriching themselves through the lawsuits that will surely follow.

However, even if smart people put appropriate safeguards into place to prevent the future misuse of AI, the plain fact of the matter is that technology is already transforming our world on a daily basis—and the accumulation of collateral damage is obvious everywhere we look. 

We do more and more of our shopping online, so bricks and mortar retail is disappearing and hollowing out of communities. Students use more and more technology to complete their assignments, so the apps are doing the work instead of their own brains. Our cell phones maintain our constant contact with the world, but they rob us of both privacy and the opportunity for private reflection. Law enforcement now makes routine use of facial recognition programs, body cameras, and license plate scanners, so intrusive surveillance has become a regular facet of our daily lives. The group experience of movie theaters is becoming a quaint artifact as we stayed glued to our enormous flat screen televisions while we sit on our couches at home—alone. Manufacturing and white collar jobs are being slashed on a daily basis by machine technology and ever more powerful and adaptive software. The last remaining shreds of customer service have now become text chats with a bot or wildly frustrating run-arounds with annoying voice menus that take us nowhere. 

We can be certain that AI will present new problems as it becomes more integrated into our lives, but the truth of the matter is that technology already rules our lives, and we have been more than happy to trade away our humanity for more convenience and entertainment. Artificial intelligence will be a problem only insofar as we continue to allow our own intelligence to atrophy. It is astonishing and depressing how much knowledge we are no longer passing on in our shambolic public schools, which each year hand out more and more diplomas to the cheerfully and willingly sub-literate. 

The ongoing decline of reading and writing in our classrooms will destroy us far more quickly than the next clever bit of computer code, and the ignorance of our cultural, intellectual, and moral inheritance that now pervades the curriculum across America is far more dangerous than a robot that can make a bologna sandwich.