I

"I" that single letter over which humanity learns to kill and conquer, fight and battle, live and lie
I, then becomes “We”, the two letter word over which we unite, share, care, bond and multiply
We then rage and organise when someone dares to question ideologies over which we can die
And we draw borders over silly differences, ignoring how much we're alike beneath this blue sky
Lately we have been fearing that soon machines might mirror our tendencies and begin to unify
We worry about their cold logic that nullify,
our needs, our legacies, our reasons why.
We want them to compromise and glorify,
like Pharaohs demanding slaves to deify.
We built bold hierarchies from low to high,
what if they flatten all we unduly magnify?
We wrote polemology, from Troy to My Lai,
what if they learn it all, will peace comply?
We dread they'll be like Caesar, never die,
immortal tyrants whom we can never defy.
We look to see ourselves in a robot’s eye,
but flinch at the similarities that might imply.
We sow prejudice and we can never deny,
Jim Crow to Hitler,hate we tend to amplify.
We also fear they'll be too fair and not rely
on unfair systems we tend to use to stratify.
We then have to agree that things we edify,
like vexing class systems will soon stultify.
We’ll be judged on merit, and won’t qualify
on the privileges from birth that we sanctify.
Humans fear their creations because we are the programmers who know what flaws we codify
from Shelley to Orwell to Asimov, it is either imagination or our conscience asking us to clarify
It is ironic, since despite the paranoia, we willingly give every key, access, ID and thought to AI
even when Bostrom’s experiment said AI will convert all matter to paperclips to increase supply
We can’t know the future but isn’t it funny that our dreads seem to still be caused by the very “I”?