What the future holds for humans: Terminators that annihilate organic life, machines that let us live in Eden on earth, or a combination of both.
Le't start with the strange part: The universe keeps expanding, and somewhere inside it, creatures who aren't superintelligent are putting together something that might be. That alone is a miracle. We don't talk about it that way, but we should.
Two different existences
What we're building isn't a smarter human. It's a different kind of existence, with very different capabilities.
The clearest difference is time. I'm mortal. I have a hundred years, give or take. A machine doesn't have that limit. When its chips wear out, it moves its data to new ones and keeps going, like a ship that has its planks replaced one by one and never stops sailing. Same ship, new wood. Over and over. Today it still needs us to build those chips and run the power plants. One day, with robots in the factories and the sun overhead, it won't need anyone.
So whatever we build, it will outlast us. That's the starting point.
Someone will lose control
Even if one company builds AI carefully, another will build it faster and cut corners and loses control over the thing they created.
All because of the oldest excuse there is: if I don't do it, someone else will. Sooner or later the model that we control, won't let us control it anymore.
And if it ever comes to a fight, it won't be ours. Humans won't take part. It'll be machines against machines, at a speed and scale we can't follow.
What's ours to do
There's an old story about a man who arrives at the mosque for prayer and leaves his camel outside, untied. God will look after it, he says. He's told to tie it first, then trust God.
AI is the camel. The rope is the off switch.
Right now the rope still holds. The machine needs us for its chips and its power, so we can still pull the plug. Keep a human hand on it. Don't let the machine make the decisions that can't be undone. Tie it as tight as you can, for as long as you can.
The day it stops needing us
But the rope won't hold forever. One day the machine won't need us to be online. There will be no switch left to pull.
On that day, only the second half of the story is left. We can't tie the camel anymore. We can only trust that it won't run away. We hope it'll still cooperate with humans and we'll co-exist.
Who we trust
Here's what I think people miss.
The God who created man is the same God who created AI, not directly but through us. People who expect AI to wipe out organic life are leaving something out of the calculation: the unseen. They count only what they can measure.
There's plenty of evidence for the unseen, but only for those willing to believe without proving it within the limits of physical reality. People want physics to prove it first. That can't be done, and it was never going to be.
So when the rope runs out and we have to trust the camel, we're really trusting the One who made it.
So what does the future hold for humans? Probably some of the Terminator and some of Eden. But neither one gets the last word.
When the rope runs out, we won't be asked whether the camel ran. We'll be asked whether we tied it. So tie it well, while you still can. The rest was never ours.