Every major advance in human history has been a multiplier. The wheel extended our reach. The engine magnified our strength. Electricity stretched our capacity beyond daylight. Radio bridged oceans. None of these replaced human intent, they simply amplified it.
Artificial Intelligence belongs in that same lineage. It multiplies our cognitive capacity, helping us think faster, spot patterns sooner, and test scenarios more broadly than we could alone. To resist it for that reason would be like resisting the motor because it carries us farther and faster than our legs ever could.
Yet the concern is real: AI can propose amoral strategies, optimizing without values. But so can every multiplier. A motor can power an ambulance or a tank. The ethical direction comes from us.
Through the lens of risk, this matters profoundly. To understand risk, we must make sense of complexity at speed. To manage risk, we must anticipate cascading consequences across interconnected systems. To communicate risk, we must distill complexity into insights that communities and decision makers can act on. AI can help us do each of these.
My condition: it must never replace human judgment.
Like the Internet in 1995, AI is already a runaway freight train. The real challenge is not stopping it, but deciding how we set the signals, build the crossings, and prepare ourselves for what comes at full speed.
Not sure it is realistic, but I wonder what safeguards or interdictions we – both as individuals and collectively – must put in place as AI accelerates? AI must not…
