Commentary: A modern Tower of Babylon? The rise of job displacement by AI.

In 2014, Stephen Hawking warned, "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."

I build automated systems, and artificial intelligence is a great and awesome tool. I am able to efficiently complete boring repetitive tasks, devoting my time to more worthwhile causes and endeavors. Yet I look on with trepidation as colleagues are fully replaced without any thought to the downstream effects or the inevitable brain drain that leads to societal decline.

As humans often do, we give our new tools too much credit. There is no single secret weapon or cure-all to societal ills. Poverty, hunger, environmental threats, illness and economic insecurity have existed since the beginning of time. Underneath those heavy hitters are the undertones of greed and jealousy, pride and wrath, envy and apathy.

Yet, my fellow humans, we find ourselves running at full speed, ramrod, into a societal shift infested by moral and economic decay, a polarized populace and a degraded and scarce pool of clean air, pure water and healthful food.

So the underlying question is why artificial intelligence is now the answer to save our human society.

Humans are an interesting group of animals. We love to anthropomorphize and will do it with anything. Just as we give human names to our major weather events, we speak fondly to or yell at our AI assistants: Alexa, Siri or Gemini. Worse, businesses expect these assistants to replace people, as anyone who has had the pleasure of requesting a customer service representative can attest. This is where it gets dangerous.