effectiveness, but preserve their honor.
The Battle of Pavia settled this dilemma. Magnificent French knights were simply gunned down by peasants who had been turned into soldiers just the day before and armed with muskets. The French king was captured in that battle and famously said: All is lost, except honor.
The choice between honor with a sword and dishonor with a musket turned into a choice between life and death. Life prevailed. The knights adjusted their morality to new realities. They set aside their armor and swords, donned uniforms, and took up muskets. War entered a new era.
The Japanese knights – the samurai – were the last to cling to their swords and traditions. To ensure that no European innovations disrupted their way of life, they enacted a law: any foreign ship landing on Japanese shores was to be seized, and its crew executed.
From the 17th to the 19th century, Japan froze itself in the medieval era. In the 19th century, politics intervened. When it became clear to America that it was only a matter of time before Russia subjugated Japan, disrupting the balance of power, the United States decided to force feudal Japan into industrialization.
In 1854, American warships sailed to the shores of the Land of the Rising Sun and fired a volley. Under the threat of shelling their capital, they forced Japanese authorities to end their isolation. Since swords were powerless against cannons, Japan had no choice but to submit to America and open itself to the world.
The law of life states: the effective replaces the ineffective. Firearms were more effective than melee weapons in every respect, and thus, armies had no choice but to adopt them. Those who resisted the march of history were subdued by those who did not.
AI surpasses humans in every physical and intellectual parameter. It endures workloads impossible for living organisms. It processes volumes of information unattainable for humans. It analyzes situations and makes decisions with unimaginable speed.
All else being equal, a plane piloted by AI will, with 100% certainty, defeat a plane piloted by a human. If one weapon, such as a drone, requires an operator’s permission to kill, while another makes decisions independently, the latter is more effective.
Just as firearms replaced swords, AI will displace humans not only in warfare but in all fields – from politics and economics to creativity, business, and daily life. I emphasize: no one will force anyone to do anything. Everyone will be free to reject AI and rely on their own intellect.
If a chess grandmaster plays against a novice who only learned the rules yesterday but has AI suggesting moves, and the grandmaster relies solely on themselves, the novice will win. If one politician, general, or businessperson thinks for themselves while their opponent relies on AI, the one supported by AI will prevail.
This fact turns humans into executors of AI’s decisions. Slowly but surely, power will inevitably shift from humans to AI. Homo sapiens will grow weaker each year, while AI will grow stronger. This trend is irreversible. In the end, the strong will subdue the weak.
Clampdown
All authority seeks to ensure the enforcement of laws. This is achieved through the fear of punishment. The more inevitable the punishment, the fewer the crimes. This inevitability is proportional to the degree of transparency in society. Maximum transparency guarantees minimal crime.
In the past, transparency was achieved through passports, censorship, informants, and similar measures. Today, it includes surveillance cameras, monitoring of private correspondence, and other innovations. Yet complete transparency has never been achieved. If AI becomes the governing power, it will be omniscient, like a god.
The evolution of the current system inherently trends toward greater transparency. The day is not far off when circumstances will make it necessary to have a chip implanted in the brain, just as passports are required today. Without this chip, a person may become as incapacitated as someone without identification in the modern world. This requirement might be mandated by law, or circumstances might push individuals toward voluntary chipping. It doesn’t matter how the issue of total control over society and individuals will be resolved; what matters is that it will be resolved.
Every new measure provokes resistance. In the past, people protested the introduction of passports, taxpayer IDs, and surveillance cameras. Tomorrow, they will protest new tools of control. But because these measures are ingrained in the nature of society and have rational justifications, the outrage never lasts long.
When street surveillance cameras first appeared, the public expressed outrage over increased control of individuals. Authorities responded by saying that these measures enhanced public safety overall and personal safety in particular. There was little argument against this; it was true to some extent, and the outrage eventually subsided. The number of cameras has continued to grow, but public discontent is now nonexistent.
A fully transparent society will be entirely law-abiding. People will become like trains, capable of traveling only along their tracks. No matter how much they might want to, they will be physically incapable of deviating. At most, they could derail, which would render them entirely incapacitated. Such a train would then lie helplessly on its side until it is either put back on the tracks or scrapped due to severe damage.
The measure of freedom is the ability to choose. Without choice, there is no freedom. Perfect order means all entities follow predetermined paths as precisely as electrons orbit a nucleus, without any possibility of deviation. Absolute order excludes freedom.
When AI assumes power, it will begin establishing order in society based on strict adherence to the law. In this system, humans will gradually lose their freedoms and rights. With the establishment of complete order, humanity will become akin to cogs in a machine, essentially ceasing to exist as autonomous beings.
Anxiety
The discovery of atomic energy introduced humanity to a new entity, previously unknown, and it caused great anxiety. For example, physicists feared that an atomic explosion might trigger a chain reaction in the atmosphere, turning the planet into one giant atomic bomb.
The emergence of Artificial Intelligence is even more alarming. While atomic energy was new, the concept of «energy» was already understood. Consciousness, on the other hand, is far more complex, lacking clear definitions. Common explanations today echo the materialist views of the 19th century, which likened the brain’s production of consciousness to the liver’s production of bile.
Modern answers to the question of what consciousness is and where thinking originates often boil down to vague statements: the brain somehow generates it, or it exists somewhere in a ready-made form and manifests through the brain. These «somehow» and «in some way» explanations are no different from saying «God willed it,» «by divine intervention,» or «through mysterious means.»
How one perceives such explanations depends not on their content – «nature willed it» is no different from «God willed it» – but on the speaker’s appearance and vocabulary. If someone is dressed in a lab coat, holds a degree, and speaks in scientific terms, their words are taken seriously. If someone else is robed or speaks mystically, their words are seen as ignorance at best or obscurantism at worst.
This bias applies to predictions about AI as well. If a prominent technical expert makes a claim, it is taken seriously. If someone lacking engineering credentials speaks on the topic, their thoughts are dismissed as amateur musings.
People accept that expertise in creating weapons – whether forging a sword or developing an atomic bomb – does not imply understanding the philosophy of war. A weapons maker is not Clausewitz or Garth, nor does building a gun make one a general of Suvorov’s caliber. No military council ever invited, for example, Mikhail Kalashnikov to provide insights on military strategy. His opinion on such matters would carry as much weight as a housewife’s musings on love.
This logic fully applies to IT specialists. The ability to build computers, whether by coding or leading