Commentary
For years, artificial intelligence experts have issued the same warning. The danger was never that machines would suddenly “wake up” and seize power, but that humans, seduced by AI’s appearance of authority, would trust it with decisions that are too important to delegate. The scenarios imagined were stark: a commander launching nuclear missiles based on faulty data; a government imprisoning its citizens because an algorithm flagged them as a risk; a financial system collapsing because automated trades cascaded out of control. These were treated as legitimate concerns, but always crises for a future time.