Is AI a tool or a threat?

Is Artificial Intelligence a positive tool or a threat to humanity?

Medical Challenges of Covid,   Art by Lyn Fenwick

The pandemic was what awakened us to the potential of AI.  If you are curious, I recommend that you visit https://financesonline.com/ai-trends/ to learn more.  That article explains how AI can "spot anomalies early enough to give them time to dynamically respond to the threats."  Having recognized the threats, AI can move more quickly to create simulation modeling, workforce planning, and demand projection.  

Using AI to confront covid showed us the importance of quick responses and constant oversight, and having seen the value of AI, its development and use has advanced rapidly.  The question is, while we are smart enough to have made rapid advancements in AI technology, are we wise enough to establish ethical guardrails to avoid the abuses AI can accomplish?

Challenges on our Planet & in Deep Space

Google has announced a new computing device capable of doing in 3 minutes and 20 seconds what current supercomputers could not complete in under 10,000 years.  I cannot even wrap my mind around that capability.  

I struggle with blocking robocalls on my phone, and I am struggling with learning how to do the same things I did efficiently on my old computer on my new computer which has, so far, intimidated me.  I respect the fact that younger minds can deal more easily with the current computer world than I can, but are they wise enough to remain smarter than the computers they create?

We already know about the threat of spying on us through face book and the websites we visit, the ability to deceive us with altered images, the use of computers to draft essays assigned by teachers rather than doing the research and writing yourself, and the loss of personal skills once valued, like creating art, poetry, music, and cursive penmanship, relegating those skills to computers.   Are we willing to abandon too many of the things that define humanity, the ethical judgements, the wisdom of generations, the refinement of beauty in art and music, the very exercise of intelligence that allowed us to create these computers?  

Or, is this just a generational thing that parents and grandparents for centuries have viewed with skepticism and worry about the natural evolution of new thinking and the opportunities of technology?  I don't know.  But, I do know that the younger generation must be smarter than our generation has been because they are going to be responsible for far more dangerous decisions than past generations faced.