The better question is how we choose to use it.
There is a familiar pattern that repeats itself throughout human history whenever a transformative technology arrives. First comes skepticism. Then fear. Then outrage. Eventually, after enough resistance and debate, society quietly integrates the technology into everyday life until people can barely remember functioning without it.
When automobiles first appeared, many people genuinely believed they would destroy society. Entire industries had been built around horses, including blacksmiths, carriage manufacturers, stable operators and breeders. To many people at the time, replacing horses with loud, unreliable machines that exploded occasionally and terrified livestock sounded ridiculous. Dangerous, even.
Yet society adapted.
Roads evolved. Infrastructure changed. New industries emerged. Entire economies formed around transportation, logistics, manufacturing and mobility. The automobile did not end human progress. It reshaped it.
The same cycle repeated during the Industrial Revolution, when machines sparked widespread fear that human labor itself would become obsolete. It happened again when computers entered workplaces and employees worried spreadsheets and software would replace office workers entirely. I’m old enough to remember when the internet triggered similar panic, with critics arguing it would destroy local businesses, eliminate human interaction and somehow make society less intelligent because people no longer needed to memorize information. They might have been right about the internet. But even calculators were once criticized for supposedly weakening mathematical ability.
Every generation eventually encounters a tool that feels like it may have gone too far.
Artificial intelligence is ours.
