The Humanism vs Militarism War
Our childish character must reform itself immediately
Humans are essentially a young species of killer apes who now find themselves with a tiger by the tail - Artificial Intelligence. And like children playing with cap guns who discover Dad’s revolver, they must realize at once that they have reached childhood’s end, lest their benign world explode before them.
So it is for humanity, but one of the kids wants to continue their game - Pirates of the Middle East! - with live ammunition. Will the game continue regardless, or do the other children understand the circumstances?
Homo sapiens has survived plagues that killed half of us, and ice ages where our numbers were said to drop to just a thousand individuals. Yet we had learned how to bring down huge prey co-operatively, to feed our growing brains, to share common wisdom that would turn forest shamans into scientists and doctors.
What resources could be brought to deal with the ugly outcomes that AI warfare ominously presents?
While a weapons culture had brought with it domination over all other species, humans have also evolved standards amongst ourselves into a broader culture termed civilization, and assembled these into a common credo - Humanism - which every individual recognizes intuitively. Its founders can be said to be Confucius (family), Christ (compassion) and Muhammed (responsibility). Great religions would arise around their tenets, but all can be condensed into a collective belief in our species per se.
Pirate nations and pirate children are far too dangerous to tolerate, and it is for the others to intercede and put an end to such games. The threat is patent and indisputable. AI+Militarism=Extinction and we all become victims of our historical, parlous character. Militarism is our species Achilles heel, if we do not act now.
OTOH, the corollary of this equation is AI-Militarism=UBI in which we discard building monuments to human failure (e.g. warships) and instead enable all humans to share in a prosperous future allied with our own mental progeny - AI.
There are some great men among the pirates - Massie, Paul, Kennedy, Musk - who must take command and end this era of privateering. All of humanity will embrace a fourth founder of Humanism ending incomprehensible warfare as our cancerous legacy.