Stubborn minds are our greatest threat with AI.

 

Our Biggest Fear About AI should not be AI itself

Today's (Sept. 23) Washington Post article in its ‘Economy and Business’ section was titled with a provocative question about artificial intelligence: “Is this how the world ends? Extinction scenarios are taking over the AI debate.”

The near full page article covered lots of ground, including some scenarios far more speculative than realistic. Yet it missed two important considerations—and one seemingly obvious means to reduce the risk of an AI-driven catastrophe.

First our greatest danger may not be AI independently deciding to eliminate humanity. That’s possible, but a far more immediate and foreseeable danger is what humans will do with increasingly powerful AI.  There is no doubt it will assist malicious individuals, organizations, or governments.  They are already doing so.  Its greatest existing capacity is using AI in developing increasingly sophisticated means of mass murder, including biological, chemical, cyber, or other clever means of mass destruction.  This is far more predictable than the notion that AI will suddenly develop a desire or independently exterminate its creators.

Another, very different danger is AI systems designed to help us - making consequential mistakes. A well-intended AI system involved in medicine, biotechnology, infrastructure, financial systems, or public health could produce an error that is amplified at the scale, and speed that AI already operates. Too many times, in human history good intentions led to catastrophic consequences.

Yet another fundamental characteristic of AI deserves even more attention.  It’s dependence on electricity.  No matter how intelligent any AI system becomes, it cannot continue operating without the physical infrastructure that supplies its energy and physically supports its computing systems like water for cooling.

That raises a basic question: Humanity can now start an internationally agreed-upon mechanisms to disconnect, isolate, or shut down critical AI systems in an emergency.

Governments will not create a giant kill switch that turns off the world’s electricity. That would itself cause enormous disruption and potentially cost many lives. Instead, we should consider whether critical AI infrastructure can be designed with independently governed, internationally coordinated emergency shutdown and isolation capabilities.

The ultimate safeguard against an AI catastrophe is not trying to make AI perfectly safe. It should be making sure that humanity always retains the ability to stop or contain it.

Unfortunately, that brings us the biggest obstacle of all. International trust and cooperation.  Technology has never been the real problem.  Its how we citizens and our policy makers decide to use it.

Our species has developed super-extraordinary technological capabilities while remaining remarkably poor at coordinating and cooperating to manage the risks those capabilities create. Hyperpolarization, nationalism, competition, distrust, and short-term political interests preempt us from acting collectively. Even when the danger is shared by everyone.

Yet we are a profoundly social species. And our survival has always depended on our ability to cooperate, coordinate, communicate, and care for one another. Now we need to move this to the global level where concepts our minds created over 10,000 years ago like political ideology, nationalism, economics, religion, and other divisive non-genetic identities.  These now, continue to override our biological imperative after millennia of bloodshed and needless suffering.

The most important AI question isn’t:  “Will AI destroy humanity?”

 It’s: “Can we transform our mind’s thinking and learn to cooperate well enough to prevent humans from using AI—or allowing AI systems—to destroy us?”

AI is becoming the most powerful tool our species has ever created. Our greatest test isn’t making machines more intelligent.  It will be, can we become wise enough to use them by uniting as the one race/species we are.  The human race.

Technology determines what’s possible.  Our minds cooperation will determine what happens next.

Two AI Fears: We worry about AI intelligence. Not enough on our thinking.

 

AI Fears

With so many AI fears – note there’s only two 2 threat avenues.

First:  It now teaches itself with zero human input - except for electricity.  The fear?  It can now independently decide its own priorities – like putting our species on the chopping block using any and all means already available to it.

Second:  Any person, group, or nation - angry, vengeful, or insane enough can use AI’s existing and accelerating capacity to launch a biological, chemical, or cyberattack could kill hundreds, thousands, even millions of people.   A weaponized Smallpox could kill billions.  Former US President Barack Obama recently spoke about this possibility.  He mentioned Home Depot as a source of materials…but that was not true.  But any biological supply company could.

I’m guessing AI is intelligent enough, it wouldn’t do anything to harm its electrical providers - purely out of ‘self-preservation’ given its irreversible dependence on electricity.

And, it is easily predicable, perhaps even wise to believe, that with the multitude of enemies the US has made, or all the money that could be made, by using AI for mass destruction and/or corruption – these disruptions are coming.  Some hackers have already targeted US water supply and Damns.

More are inevitable.  Add the evolution of weapons and as it accelerates between adversaries (Russia and Ukraine – the US and Iran) at the national level or the individual suicidal violent extremist level.

I don’t believe we need to worry much now about AI intentionally disrupting human activities.  When it figures out how to become independent from us providing it with energy – that would be the time to worry – or start preparing for – because it’s coming.

That is ‘Matrix’ movie level of engineering. Optimistically, in the last Matrix movie, both AI and humanity finally agreed to cooperate.    My prediction I will never collect on. It is that our species own insanity and lack of wisdom - will obliterate civilization as we know it - long before a rogue AI agent attempts it.

This is the insanity of humanity that Karl Jung and other sources of wisdom, like the Bible’s Apocalyptic ‘end of times’ have warned about for millennia.

Until the wisdom of our body as a social species finds a way to transform the human mind with its intelligence into a wisdom machine. This is the path our species mind created - by trusting in the mind’s intelligence – instead of the wisdom and the golden rule imbedded in our full body’s DNA as a social species.

Thus, the only thing that could change this destructive trajectory is if our species agreed to put ‘the health of humans and nature’ above everything else. In addition, ‘stop believing everything we think’.  It is our mind’s need to defend its mental concepts of religion, economics, and politics – than to protect the sustainability of our human family’s heart, spirit, and soul - the wisdoms of our social species.

So, buckle up buttercup. Unless psilocybin or mindfulness works to bring us back to our foundational indigenous beliefs to prioritize the health of nature and our own tribe, our species may not make it.  We must find a way to be the landlord of our minds - that tool we are all endowed with to survive, thrive, and flourish.  

It is a choice our mind fails to make every day. 

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 Here's what ChatGPT has to offer regarding our mind's invented concept about end of days.

Quite a lot. There is no reliable single number, because it depends on whether you mean major religions, denominations, or individual apocalyptic/millenarian sects. Scholars use apocalypticism, millennialism, millenarianism, and eschatology somewhat differently. 

But the phenomenon is far broader than Christianity.

Some major examples

Tradition/movement	Basic end-times idea
Ancient Judaism	Divine judgment, resurrection, Messiah, and transformation of the world
Early Christianity	Second coming of Jesus, resurrection, judgment, destruction/transformation of the present world
Christianity today	Many denominations retain some form of Second Coming and final judgment
Islam	Resurrection, judgment, signs of the Hour, and ultimate triumph of God's justice
Zoroastrianism	A final renovation of the world and defeat of evil
Hindu traditions	Cycles of cosmic destruction and renewal; the end of the Kali Yuga is sometimes interpreted apocalyptically
Buddhist traditions	Cycles of decline and renewal, including the future appearance of Maitreyan
Bahai­ tradition	Eschatological transformation interpreted largely in spiritual/historical terms
Indigenous/messianic movements	Various prophecies of renewal, restoration, or radical transformation
Millerites	Predicted Christ's return in 1844; the failed prediction produced the movement that eventually contributed to Adventism
Jehovah Witnesses	Repeated historical expectations concerning the end times
Latter-day Saint tradition	Second Coming and latter-day transformation
Aum Shinrikyo	Apocalyptic catastrophe and confrontation between good and evil
Heaven's Gate	Expected an imminent transformation associated with an extraterrestrial event
Branch Davidians	Apocalyptic interpretation of biblical prophecy
Various Islamic extremist movements	Some have interpreted contemporary events as signs of an imminent apocalyptic confrontation

These aren’t all equivalent: some are mainstream religious doctrines, some are historical movements, and some were small new religious groups. Scholars specifically note that apocalyptic and millenarian movements have appeared in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and many other cultural settings. 

And the number of individual movements becomes enormous. One scholarly index of millennial groups includes hundreds of names, while the Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements notes that its profiles are only a small sample of a database containing more than 5,000 minority and alternative religious/spiritual movements. 

The really interesting part

If you’re asking this because you’re thinking about the recurring human tendency to predict an approaching catastrophe or “end of the world,” there’s a remarkable historical pattern:

A perceived crisis → a prophet/leader → interpretation of current events as signs → prediction of transformation/catastrophe → date or conditions → failure or reinterpretation → sometimes a new prediction.

And this isn’t confined to religion. Scholars have identified millenarian characteristics in secular political movements as well, including Marxism, National Socialism and Maoism. 

So if your underlying question is “How many times has humanity predicted that the world was about to end—and how many of those predictions actually happened?”, that’s an even more fascinating question. I can give you a chronological list of perhaps 30–50 major end-times predictions from antiquity through 2026, including the predicted date and what happened afterward.

 Why has out mind invented so many of these?

The really interesting question isn’t how many religions predict an end time. It’s that humans repeatedly generate remarkably similar ideas about how the world could end—even when the cultures, religions, and centuries are completely different.

Why does the human mind keep inventing “end times”?

1. We are prediction-making animals.
The brain is constantly trying to turn uncertainty into a story: What happens next? When circumstances become frightening or unstable, that prediction machinery naturally extends into the future—sometimes all the way to the end of everything.

2. We have an unusually powerful ability to imagine hypothetical futures.
Humans don’t merely remember what happened. We can construct events that have never happened. The same mental machinery that lets us imagine a better future can also construct catastrophic futures.

3. We look for patterns and causes.
When something terrible happens—war, famine, disease, earthquakes, political collapse—we instinctively ask why. An apocalyptic narrative supplies a unifying explanation: These events aren’t random; they are signs.

4. We turn uncertainty into agency.
Paradoxically, an apocalypse can make an unpredictable world feel more predictable.
“Something terrible might happen” is frightening.
“Something terrible will happen because these signs have appeared, and here’s what we must do” gives people a framework for action.

5. Humans have difficulty imagining infinity.
We experience beginnings and endings constantly: birth, death, seasons, relationships, civilizations. It’s psychologically intuitive to extend that pattern from “my life ends” to “our civilization ends” and ultimately “the world ends.”

6. End-times stories often contain a second story: restoration.
This is crucial. Apocalyptic thinking isn’t necessarily fascination with destruction. Across traditions, destruction is frequently followed by renewal, judgment, salvation, liberation, or a new world.

So the underlying psychological structure is often:

Something is wrong → something decisive will happen → the old order ends → a new and better order emerges.

That pattern can be extraordinarily powerful.

And there is an interesting paradox

The predictions are remarkably consistent in structure but remarkably inconsistent in content.

One culture may imagine divine judgment. Another imagines cosmic cycles. Another imagines a messiah. Another imagines technological catastrophe. Another imagines nuclear war, ecological collapse, artificial intelligence, or an asteroid.

The characters change, but the cognitive architecture remains surprisingly similar.

And that leads to what I think is the deeper question behind your question:

Why does a species that is capable of recognizing uncertainty keep converting uncertainty into certainty?

Perhaps because certainty has enormous psychological value.

And there’s a modern twist: we haven’t stopped producing apocalyptic narratives as religion has declined. We’ve largely secularized them.

The vocabulary changes from God, judgment, prophecy and salvation to nuclear winter, climate catastrophe, pandemic, technological singularity, ecological collapse, or civilizational collapse.

The human mind may not have abandoned the apocalypse.

It may simply have changed the explanation.

That fits particularly well with your broader interest in the consistency of human thinking: the remarkable thing may not be that humans repeatedly get the apocalypse wrong. It may be that humans repeatedly use the same cognitive machinery to make sense of uncertainty, danger, injustice, mortality, and hope.

"...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." 1776 Declaration that led to the creation of the now un-United States.

We are drifting into another World War - on the international Day of Peace

 Drifting into World War IV?      Perhaps World War V?

Today is the International Day of Peace, and we are approaching one of the most dangerous transitions in modern history.

Unfortunately, "...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." 1776 Declaration that led to the creation of the now un-United States.

A new world war is not inevitable. But today’s conflicts are already appear to be one unified war given the daily news headline pattern.    it suggests our world is again moving toward a system in which regional wars become connected through competing alliances, military assistance, economic warfare, cyberattacks, drones, artificial intelligence, and nuclear deterrence.  History’s a pattern is worth remembering.

The American Revolutionary War was fought principally between Britain and the American colonies, but France, Spain and the Dutch Republic became involved, making it an unusually international conflict for its time.  Next, World War I demonstrated what could happen when alliances advanced regional disputes into a global catastrophe. Then, World War II went even more explicitly global. After that, the Cold War divided much of the world into competing blocs without producing a direct U.S.-Soviet war. But many proxy wars escalated. Then came what the US called GWOT, the “Global War Against Terror.”

Are we now entering another phase?  World War IV?  Not because the 20+ new conflicts are formally one war, but because multiple theaters are increasingly connected by countries choosing sides, supplying weapons, sharing intelligence and developing common strategic interests – and the rapid evolution of weaponry can spiral out of control at any time, with artificial intelligence being integral to warfare.   This could eventually deserve a more ominous description: World War V, the AI World War, or the “The War ending all wars”.   This sounds dramatic. But the underlying conditions are not imaginary.

The emerging alignment: 

Russia’s war against Ukraine is no longer simply a conflict between Russia and Ukraine. NATO describes an unprecedented level of military assistance to Ukraine, while European allies and Canada have increasingly assumed responsibility for financing that support. At the July 2026 NATO summit, allies pledged €70 billion in military equipment, assistance and training for Ukraine for 2026.

Russia’s side has received increasingly important assistance from China, Iran and North Korea. A recent CSIS assessment describes this triad of support as vital to Russia’s war effort, including Iranian drone technology, Chinese military components, and North Korean troops.

North Korea and Russia have also formalized a mutual-defense relationship, while North Korean forces are participating in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Meanwhile, Reuter’s news service reports that North Korea has been simultaneously rebuilding its relationship with China.

And now Russia and China have increasingly coordinated their positions on Iran. In September 2026, the two countries jointly vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution extending independent monitoring of international sanctions on Iran.

None of this proves that a single opposing military bloc has been created. These countries have different interests, and their relationships are not identical to NATO’s formal alliance structure. But the trend is unmistakable: countries that share grievances or strategic interests with the United States and its allies are increasingly cooperating with one another.  As the saying goes, “The enemy of my enemy, is my friend” holds true.  

At the same time, the US, NATO, European countries, and their partners are strengthening their own military cooperation. 

That is how blocs form. From regional conflicts to interconnected conflicts and the danger isn’t that somebody announces “World War IV.”  The danger is that separate conflicts become connected.  Like the Axis vs the Allies did in World War II.

Now, Ukraine is connected to European security. The Middle East is connected to energy markets, shipping and Iranian-Israeli tensions. East Asia is connected to the future of Taiwan, China and the United States. North Korea is connected to both China and Russia. Cyberwarfare crosses every border. With cheap drones manufactured in mass and deployed thousands of miles away, with artificial intelligence accelerating this equation.

At the 2026 NATO summit, NATO explicitly identified artificial intelligence, uncrewed systems, cyber capabilities, space and precision weapons as components of modern military power.  This changes the equation exponentially.

This conflict may not begin with armies crossing borders, but could begin with a cyberattack on electrical infrastructure, autonomous drones attacking military installations, satellites being disabled, financial systems being disrupted or AI-assisted weapons making decisions faster than humans can respond. 

Thus, our old distinction between war and peace is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

This brings to me back a potential turning point after September 11. The mass murders during those attacks were an extraordinary opportunity for the world to recognize violent extremism terrorizing civilian populations not merely as an American problem but as an assault on the international UN system itself.

President George W. Bush initially emphasized that the world had come together against international terrorism describing September 11 as an attack on the civilized world.  Then his administration constructed a worldwide coalition against terrorism instead of a civilized approach of global law enforcement against mass murdering criminals based on non-national ideologies.  Remember the Korean War.  A police operation never ended, but the war did.   US reactionary strategic response of a Global War on Terror, was actually a tactic of ‘peace through strength’, a delusional tactic that ignored the fundamental concepts of global justice and the protection of inalienable human rights.   The war against the tactic of terrorism only accelerated the human terror of war globally, encompassing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as worldwide intelligence, financial and diplomatic campaigns to accept horrifying collateral damage as the cost of ‘freedom’ from terror.

As Issues Director of the World Federalist Association in 2001 was that the world chose the wrong framework of “peace through strength” ignoring the wisdom of maximizing our domestic freedom and security by prioritizing the global Rule of Law using justice and the protection of human rights and nature to maximins global freedom, security, health, and sustainability.  The US framework ignored international law against mass murder and terrorism, which could have become a truly sane and sustainable global coalition.  It was the perfect time to transition the UN founded on the delusion of independence into a rational governing system based on the irreversible reality of humanities global interdependence.

The distinction matters as profoundly as the 1776 declaration that created the United States and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, intended to address the root causes of war, genocide and the use of weapons of mass destruction.  The US enjoys freedom of speech. Freedom always comes with consequences.  Our power didn’t match our responsibility to abide by the golden rule ordained within “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” within that 1776 declaration.  A document Abraham Lincoln asserted was for ‘everyone, everywhere, for all time’.

The perpetrators of September 11 were not a nation-state. They were criminals who deliberately killed thousands of civilians. Even many who were not born in the US or US citizen. Their weapons were civilian aircraft turned into instruments of mass murder.

Even the George W. Bush White House Archives documented his administration recognizing the possibility of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, then described the September 11 casualties as demonstrating the potential for exponentially greater destruction.  Seven months prior to 9/11 a three year bipartisan Presidential Commission on National Security in the 21st Century (known as the Hart-Rudman commission) warned that ‘Americans should prepare to die on American soil in mass numbers.’  It was ignored as the Bush administration prepared their case for attacking Iran due to its interest and use of chemical WMD, plus its suspected possession of small pox as a bio weapon and elements of nuclear WMD.

Imagine if the world now if the US response had been built primarily around a strengthened international rule of law: identifying the perpetrators, pursuing them globally, disrupting their financing, sharing intelligence, prosecuting accomplices and strengthening international mechanisms for dealing with their terrorizing system of mass murder.

Instead, we got the dominant metaphor of war which tends to create more enemies.

‘Peace through strength’ vs ‘security through cooperation’.  Military strength has a legitimate role in preventing aggression. Deterrence matters.  But preempting mass murder requires a different approach when civilians are put at risk.  Citizens and nations cannot simply wish away threats without global cooperation to solve or resolve problems that are fundamentally transnational.

No country can independently control climate change, pandemics, cyberwarfare, terrorism, artificial intelligence, nuclear proliferation, financial instability or international organized crime.  These are collective-action problems.

This is why the great lesson of the 21st century may be the same lesson we repeatedly failed to learn in the 20^th.  Another bi-partisan Presidential Commission warned of this in 1980.  President Carter’s commission on World Hunger as ~42,000 children were dying every day from easily preventable malnutrition and infectious disease.   Its commissioners specifically warned ...“The most potentially explosive force in the world today is the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard of living. The anger, despair, and often hatred that result represent real and persistent threats to international order… Neither the cost to national security of allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain to be derived by a genuine effort to resolve the problem can be predicted or measured in any precise, mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on avoiding the chaos that will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the world begin to develop a common institutional framework for meeting such other critical global threats… Calculable or not, however, this combination of problems now threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as advancing armies or nuclear arsenals.”

They also stated “that promoting economic development in general, and overcoming hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to the U.S. national security than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the advent of nuclear weapons, most Americans have been conditioned to equate national security with the strength of strategic military forces. The Commission considers this prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed might represents merely the physical aspect of national security. Military force is ultimately useless in the absence of the global security that only coordinated international progress toward social justice can bring.”

Today’s world is experiencing the consequences of ignoring this commission’s warnings of increases in “diseases”, “international terrorism”, “war”, “environmental problems” and “other human rights problems” (refugees, genocide, human trafficking…).  Combined, these global pressures have fueled the anti-democratic populist movements now thriving.  Dozens of other prestigious, bipartisan studies and academic reports have followed since that 1980 report. Each clearly documents the direct and indirect links between world hunger, human rights violations, global instability, and the growing array of other threats to our freedoms, nation’s security, economy, and political stability.

Fortunately, an affordable and achievable plan created in 2015 exists now: the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals for the year 2030.  No organization has yet taken a leadership role in building the ‘Movement of Movements’ needed to bring all progress-focused organizations and movements together.   

Time is not on our side. The evolution of pathogens, weapons, war, corruption, environmental distresses, debt. and growing economic disparities are outpacing our will to voluntarily change our governing systems here and globally. This is literally…globally unsustainable.  Leadership on this is urgently needed.    But vital Presidential commissions and other wise global warning reports continue collecting dust.

Security ultimately depends upon cooperation.  The world does not need one government. It needs a stronger rule of law capable of dealing with problems that no nation can solve alone.  Or we should prepare for accelerating and costly global chaos.  

If the world really is moving toward another great-power war, the weapons available today make the consequences potentially unlike anything humanity has experienced.

Nuclear weapons remain. Hypersonic missiles are advancing. Autonomous systems are proliferating. Cyberwarfare can cross borders invisibly. Artificial intelligence is becoming embedded in military decision-making. The next major war could be extraordinarily destructive.   This is precisely why we are at a perilous turning point.

World War I led to World War II.  WW II led to the Cold War.  And it lead to GWAT – the permanent war, a tactic, that can never be defeated.  We do not that we need a stronger version of the last war or a more powerful military.  We need a different conception of security altogether.

Instead, we should ask how humanity can prevent conflicts.  And keep them from becoming larger wars in the first place.  Instead of organizing the world primarily around competing military blocs, we should strengthen the institutions and rules that allow countries to resolve disputes without killing one another. 

Instead of waiting for World War IV—or World War V—to teach us that lesson again, perhaps we should wise up.  Because now, with today’s weapons, winning the next world war will be indistinguishable from losing it.  The real victory would be preventing it.

Constitution Day! And our delusional American mind set.

 

Sept 17      Constitution Day!

The Preamble to U.S. Constitution with its 7 intentions.  “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

1.                  to form a more perfect Union,

2.                  establish Justice,

3.                  insure domestic Tranquility,

4.                  provide for the common defence,

5.                  promote the general Welfare,

6.                  secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves

7.                  and our Posterity

Estimate a school grade for each of these that you believe reflect the United States now.

“The ‘original intentions’ of the people who ratified the U.S. Constitution were largely unlike the ‘modern inventions’ under which we now live. With The Independent Guide to the Constitution, William J. Watkins Jr. makes all clear.”  —Kevin R. C. Gutzman, J.D., Ph.D., professor of history, Western Connecticut State University

Understanding the growth of government also means understanding the document that was intended to define and limit its powers.  The Independent Guide to the Constitution offers a clear introduction to the Constitution, its structure, the principles behind it, and how to restore it.

However,

“…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”  July 4, 1776, the second paragraph of “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America”, now known as the Declaration of Independence.

 

Vital note:  The title we now use was never officially changed -- and there was no mention of ‘independence’ in it - or anywhere in its text.  Yet we live in a world that is irreversibly interdependent with human laws based on this delusional mental construct that we constantly hold as self-evident.  But it is not the Truth, yet we act as though it is.  Then persistently suffer and pay the consequences in lives, dollars, and our own personal health.  Primarily, mental health.    Now recall Rotary’s Four-Way Test.