In an op-ed for The New York Times, opinion columnist Thomas Friedman likened artificial intelligence advances to opening Pandora’s box. “We as a society are on the cusp of having to decide on some very big trade-offs as we introduce generative A.I.,” he writes. “And government regulation alone will not save us.” 

One of these Pandora’s boxes is labeled “artificial intelligence,” and it is exemplified by the likes of ChatGPT, Bard and AlphaFold, which testify to humanity’s ability for the first time to manufacture something in a godlike way that approaches general intelligence, far exceeding the brainpower with which we evolved naturally.

The other Pandora’s box is labeled “climate change,” and with it we humans are for the first time driving ourselves in a godlike way from one climate epoch into another. Up to now, that power was largely confined to natural forces involving Earth’s orbit around the sun.