A few days back, I came across a video of a panel discussion on the impact of AI. One panelist said it won’t be long before we have systems that are more intelligent than humans. But should we fear machines will take over humans and start controlling us? This panellist felt this was not a probability because intelligent people do not control others. They like to collaborate and perform as a collective. He also said that he always prefers recruiting those he finds more intelligent than himself. That way, he can have a team that performs much better than his expectations. Similarly, if machines develop as more intelligent than humans, they will not try to control but find a way of coexistence. 

Prima facie, I agreed with all that he had to say. But as I thought more about it, I felt we oversimplified the issue. If the intelligent do not try to control, are we to believe that dictators are dumb? The fact that they rose to become the top leaders of a huge population (sometimes countries) makes it a paradox. 

This got me down to introspect how we, as humans, have behaved in the past. It did not take much time to feel that most of the time, humans have been short-sighted, rejoicing in short-term solutions while ignoring the long-term impact. Foresight has often been a missing critical element in our large-scale initiatives, leading to the lack of a guiding light that could have shown us the potential pitfalls and helped pave the way for sustainable progress. 

Take, for instance, the extraction of fossil fuels for our energy needs. While providing a quick solution for energy demands, after around one-and-a-half centuries, we realise that this practice contributes significantly to climate change, habitat destruction, and pollution. The consequences of these actions are not confined to the immediate areas of extraction; they ripple across the globe, affecting ecosystems and communities far removed from the source. I am not saying that humans should have never used fossil fuel, but had we the foresight and the attitude of challenging the status quo in decision-making, it could have prompted a much earlier shift towards sustainable energy alternatives, mitigating the environmental damage caused by our dependence on finite resources.

Our actions towards natural resources become even more imperative, as exploiting these resources for short-term human convenience is steering us toward the Holocene extinction.

Moreover, our preferential treatment of certain communities has always perpetuated a cycle of harm. We always knew that when resources are disproportionately allocated to specific groups, it can create imbalances within societies. Overexploitation will always lead to dissatisfaction, and the harm inflicted on one community eventually reverberates across others, creating a cascade of negative effects.

In the long run, preferential treatment is bound to backfire, as the depletion of resources and opportunities will ultimately impact even the privileged communities. The repercussions may not be immediately apparent, but they are inevitable. 

Even when we understand the new issues, many of our policies are framed to do the opposite of what happened earlier. This shifts the balance from one side to the other, but the holistic issue persists. This can be realised if we carefully study a few sustainable solutions lauded nowadays. One example would be incineration, where waste materials are burned in the presence of oxygen at high temperatures. Without a treatment mechanism for toxic gases, ground pollution would normally be transformed into air pollution, both harmful to the ecosystem.

Foresight demands that we consider the broader consequences of our actions, recognising that what may seem advantageous in the short term can result in detrimental outcomes for all. Knee-jerk remedial actions should be avoided at all costs.