Table Of Contents
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Intro
Back in the 1900s.
When electricity first came into homes, people were terrified. Some thought it would burn their house down. Others believed it was unnatural, even evil. (Some churches banned electric light bulbs!)
Fast forward a few years. Everyone’s wiring their homes, building power grids, and saying they can’t imagine life without a fridge or light switch.
The same story repeats to trains (Too fast! They’ll kill us!), telephones (Scary voices in the box!) and video games (They can damage your brain!).
At first, we resist.
Then, we explore.
And finally, we embrace.
The AI Panic
In 2020s, it’s AI’s turn to go through the same cycle.
People fear it’ll take our jobs, replace human creativity, be used for war or crime, manipulate or spy on us (just like The Matrix).
And those concerns aren’t wrong. They’re valid.
Every powerful tool has consequences. A hammer can build a home or break a window. It depends on who’s holding it.
But let’s not forget the other side of the story.
AI is also helping doctors detect diseases faster, empowering disabled people to communicate, assisting students to learn in personalized ways, helping programmers, writers, and creators to doubly boost their creativity.
AI is just a tool. It was created by us and therefore reflects us.
Normalization
Nowadays, AI still feels strange to many people. Some think it’s the end of humanity. Others think it’s a fancy calculator.
But give it a few years, and we’ll see about that.
What we fear today will become tomorrow’s normal, just like always.
Have you remember when people said:
- “Never put your credit card on the internet!”
- “Never trust a car that drives itself!”
- “Never talk to a robot!”
But now, we do all of those every single day.
Eventually, we get used to it.
Outro
Humans haven’t changed much.
We still fear what we don’t understand. We still argue, doubt, protest, and resist until the benefits become too obvious to ignore.
That’s not bad. We’re just humans being humans.
We will question everything that could change our perspectives on the way of living.
So is AI a friend or a foe?
The actual answer is It depends on us.
Like every chapter before in our story with technology, we’ll fear it, learn it, mess it up, and then make peace with it.
Same as ever.