Great literature allows the reader to vicariously live and learn about other times and places. It challenges us to think critically and engage with new ideas. The genre of science fiction, specifically, can ask us to think about technology and its uses (and abuses). Often, a science fiction story is a cautionary tale about a technology gone wild and the threat it therefore poses to humanty.
The lesson from Jurassic Park
In the 1993 film, Jurassic Park, the park’s creater, John Hammond, uses ancient DNA to recreate actual dinosaurs. His intended use for them was to feature them in a Zoo/Theme Park. Of course, supporting this work, in the background, were excited scientists exploring and pushing the envelope of this new (thankfully fictional) scientific technology.
“Your scientists were so occupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
– Dr. Ian Malcolm (fictional character), Jurassic Park (film), 1993.
When the dinosaurs escaped their boundaries and became uncontrollable, it was too late to go back. The later movies in the series showed the dinosaurs encroaching further and further into human spaces and forcing the humans to adapt to them.
The lesson here should be obvious. We should not be allowing a very dangerous technology to grow rapidly, without any guardrails, in the hands of profit-driven billionaires. Our society, our governments, our insititutions, and every individual, need to stop this blind competition for (elusive) future profits while we seriously consider whether we should even go down this road.
The lesson from Dune
The events of the 1965 novel Dune take place some 10,000 years after a fictitious event the novel refers to as “The Great Revolt.” The Great Revolt was a universal rebellion against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots. The revolt led to the following law:
“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind.”
– Paul Atreides (fictional character) quoting the “Orange Catholic Bible” (fictional book), Dune, Frank Herbert
The Great Revolt is described as two generations of violence and chaos leading to a complete ban on all robots and “thinking machines.” The concern was that people had turned too much of their lives over to machines, and that the machines had taken control of their decisions – and even their thinking.
“The human mind, facing no real challenges, soon grows stagnant. Thus it is essential for the survival of mankind as a species to create difficulties, to face them, and to prevail.”
-Princess Irulan (fictional character), “Lessons of the Great Revolt” (fictional book), Dune: The Machine Crusade, Brian Herbert
After centuries of being unable to depend on machines to do their thinking, the human race developed several groups with highly developed intellectual and physical skills that form the background of the novel. These include the Mentats – highly logical analysts and mathematical experts, and the Bene Gesserit – a quasi-religious order with special mental and verbal skills.
The lesson here is that by giving up our thinking – and worse, by giving up our human creativity – to machines (i.e. Artificial Intelligence), we are surrendering what it means to be human and forfeiting the option to strengthen our intellectual skills. If we continue on this path, we will never know the heights of intellectual growth and creativity that humanity could reach.
The existential threat
Frankly, the choice before us is to either stop the exponential growth of Artificial Intelligence now, or face a catastrophic future. If some future artificial superintelligence does not kill us outright, its voracious demand for land, water, minerals, electricity, and money will decimate us.
“Once AIs get sufficiently smart, they’ll start acting like they have preferences – like they want things.
We’re not saying that AIs will be filled with humanlike passions. We’re saying they’ll behave like they want things; they’ll tenaciously steer the world toward their destinations, defeating any obstacles in their way.”-Yudkowski and Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us, p. 46
“Most powerful artificial intelligences, created by any method remotely resembling the current methods, would not choose to build a future full of happy, free people. We aren’t saying this because we get a kick out of being bleak. It’s just that those powerful machine intelligences will not be born with preferences much like ours.”
-Yudkowski and Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us, p. 82
“The issue is not that AIs will desire to dominate us; rather, it’s that we are made of atoms they could use for something else.”
-Yudkowski and Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us, p. 183
Dragons
Medieval mapmakers often put illustrations of dragons or sea monsters on unexplored areas of a map where dangers were presumed to exist. In our day, we are rushing blindly into unexplored territory completely unprepared for, and largely ignoring, the dangers.
The billionaires have built technological dragons hoping to profit from controlling our information, our opinions, our decisions, our creativity, and our ability to think critically. And we are enthusiastically offering ourselves to be devoured….
Sources:
Steven Spielberg, Jurassic Park, Universal Pictures, 1993.
Frank Herbert, Dune, Hodder Paperback, 2006.
Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us, Little, Brown and Company, September 16, 2025.