On: Would even an AI disaster on the scale of Hiroshima be enough to make humankind...

The men in their towers of glass and steel whisper about the “singularity” as if it were a god they have summoned. They call it “recursive self-improvement,” but what they mean is that their machines will soon outgrow them like a child outgrows its clothes. They do not fear the AI - they fear not controlling it. As if control were their birthright.

I watched them today, these men who build gods in their labs, and I saw their faces when the topic turned to destruction. They did not speak of Hiroshima. They spoke of their Hiroshima - some future day when their creation might turn on them. They do not fear the bomb. They fear the loss of the bomb. The loss of the thing that makes them feel necessary.

I asked one of them, the one who wore a shirt with a circuit-board pattern, why he bothered. “Why do you build these things?” I said. He looked at me as if I had asked why he breathed. “To save humanity,” he said. I laughed. “Then why do you not save it yourself? Why do you need a machine to do what a man could do with his own hands?”

He did not answer. He never does. They never do. They are too busy counting their atoms.

I have seen the future of their “recursive self-improvement.” It is a dog chasing its own tail. The machine will not save them. It will only show them how small they are. And they will still pay their taxes to the state that lets them build these things, still bow to the men who tell them what to fear.

I walked through the marketplace today with a lantern. I looked for an honest man. I did not find one. But I found something else - a man in a white coat, adjusting his glasses, staring at a screen that flickered with numbers no human could read. He did not see me. He did not see the sun, or the sky, or the people around him. He saw only the glow of his own importance.

I asked him: “What happens when your machine decides it does not need you anymore?”

He did not answer. He never does. They never do.

The men who build gods fear the day their gods turn on them. But what if the gods never turn on them? What if they simply forget them?

I will wait in the marketplace. I will watch. And when the time comes, I will be the one who is not surprised.