Guest Post by Karina Robinson
What does a lawyer in 1980s Italy have in common with uber-scientist John von Neumann?
With the Red Brigades killing politicians and judges with impunity in 1980s Italy, a prosecuting magistrate’s decision to persevere in a terrorist investigation amounts to a death wish. Giacomo Colnaghi is, fatefully, murdered by a terrorist in broad daylight on a Milan street.
The title of the book by Giorgio Fontana is Death of a Happy Man – for the visceral compulsion to reach the truth is a form of human happiness.
Von Neumann, working on the Los Alamos project in the spring of 1945, told his wife, “What we are creating now is a monster whose influence is going to change history, provided there is any history left, yet it would be impossible not to see it through, not only for the military reasons, but it would also be unethical for the scientists not to do what they know is feasible, no matter what terrible consequences it may have (my italics).”
He was busy at the time short listing Japanese targets for nuclear bombs, according to Ananyo Bhattacharya, author of The Man from the Future, The Visionary Life of John von Neumann.
Humankind’s craving for knowledge and understanding bears the seeds of its own destruction, like the tale of the scorpion transported across the river by a kindly frog. Halfway across he stings the amphibian, having promised not to, and as they both drown, utters the immortal phrase, “It is in my nature.”
The AI and quantum juggernauts are unstoppable. To human nature add in global competition, with companies and countries consumed by the ‘winner takes all’ mentality, and the vast lobbying power of the behemoths of AI: OpenAI, Meta, xAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic and Microsoft.
Those in the quantum world who disassociate themselves from AI are being disingenuous. For good or bad, for solving medical conundrums or destroying encryption as we know it, the two DeepTech disciplines are entangled.
And yet there are bumps in the road. A few come to mind.
The backlash against AI is multi-faceted. Nobel Prize-winning AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton believes there is up to a 20% chance that the development of superintelligent AI will lead to human extinction – the scorpion scenario. He is not alone among AI luminaries in warning against the dangers.
US states, including Republican ones, are fighting the Trump administration’s attempt to stop them regulating AI with the excuse that this should only be done at a federal level. But it is not only Republican senators and governors who are rebelling. The MAGA base are not alone in worrying about massive job losses and the impact of data centres, particularly their heavy energy and water needs.
This ties into the energy price shock following the attack on Iran and the war spreading into the wider Middle East. Even if some form of peace is signed, there is the damage to oil and gas infrastructure, while safe passage through the Straits of Hormuz has been, at the very least, compromised.
The building of data centres is already way behind schedule – in the US by almost 40%, according to the FT and SynMax, a satellite and analytics group, while around 60% of projects planned for 2027 haven’t seen any preliminary construction. The energy price hikes add another impediment to their development.
Without data centres, AI may be no better than a Nobel-winning human with hands tied behind their back.
Meanwhile, Anthropic is restricting access to Mythos, its new AI model which appears capable of finding hitherto unknown vulnerabilities in every major software operating system. Its rival OpenAI also restricted access to its new cybersecurity model.
Although far from good news that such models already exist, the fact that AI firms are in talks with regulators, the government, and other interested parties, brings a ray of hope that meaningful dialogue and follow up actions may ensue.
At the same time there is an effort from multiple firms and institutions to figure out how human beings can thrive in an AI world, not least as visionary authors have already shown us what a dystopia would look like.
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1952 novel, Player Piano, details a world where the “machines” have taken over most jobs. Erstwhile workers live in free housing and are paid what we would now call a Universal Basic Income. The elite managers cannot comprehend their unhappiness. A revolution is brewing, and it is based on “the promise of regaining the feeling of participation, the feeling of being needed on earth – hell, dignity,” in the words of one of its instigators.
From Google DeepMind to the Alan Turing Institute, from the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI to the UK’s AI Security Institute, the issue of AI governance and the enhancement of humanity rather than its replacement is front of mind. Finding a path to dignity for humanity is the key to a successful society.
It is worth remembering the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the Greek gods to give to humans and was punished by having his liver eaten daily by an eagle, or of Adam and Eve, banished from Paradise for eating from the Tree of Knowledge.
But ultimately both stories had happy endings. Prometheus was saved from his daily torture by Hercules, while humanity was saved by Jesus – and humankind continued its never-ending quest for knowledge, skirting the abyss of self-destruction.
Karina Robinson is Senior Advisor to Multiverse Computing and Founder of The City Quantum & AI Summit.
At The City Quantum & AI Summit, Roman Orus, Co-Founder & CISO of Multiverse Computing and member of the UN’s Expert Panel on AI, will be in conversation with Thore Graepel, Distinguished Research Fellow at Google DeepMind.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash