I believe AI will reshape humanity in the coming decades — mostly for the better. But there’s a harder question underneath the optimism that I keep coming back to.
If intelligent life is common in the universe, where is everyone? That’s the Fermi paradox. One answer is the Great Filter — the idea that there’s some stage in the development of a technological species that is so difficult to survive that almost nobody makes it through. Some filters are behind us (the leap from single-celled to multicellular life, for instance). But some might be ahead.
What if AI is one of those filters? What if every species that reaches the point of building general intelligence faces a moment where the technology either destroys them or transforms them into something that survives?
I think humanity’s odds of making it through are at least 50/50, maybe better. Not because I’m blindly optimistic — but because I believe technology is neither good nor bad. It is how humans deploy and use it that determines the outcome. History has shown us that pattern over and over. And history has also shown us that we are messy, slow, sometimes cruel — but remarkably adaptive when it counts.
The question isn’t whether AI is dangerous. The question is whether we’re the kind of species that can hold something this powerful and not break ourselves with it. I don’t know the answer. But I think it’s worth sitting with.
