Last week, even the fast-forwards of the world, tech giants and experts got scared of Artificial Intelligence and its fast-growing inventory world. This common concern over the last few years and a couple of decades has reached a peak after OpenAI solved a 90-year-old mathematical question, which was listed among the $1 million prize-rated questions.

The OpenAI boss, Sam Altman, released a statement afterwards, saying that he would slow down the pace of his work at OpenAI. This achievement has also sparked controversy over ethical behaviour, as the concept of investigation was outsourced from queries made on the AI platform about ongoing research by a next-generation mathematician at Harvard. I think that was one reason OpenAI said it would not claim the $1 million prize. However, the problem is that Sam Altman is not the only person on earth working to investigate the unexplored, unlimited dimensions of AI.

While the world is worried about AI’s progress and the day it could wipe out humans, my thoughts are completely different. AI lacks ‘being’; it does not have the sense to feel the ‘beauty of existence’. Perhaps that’s why we are called human ‘beings’, and not just humans. I believe we can use AI to the limit to do things we haven’t been able to do, in a way that makes our ‘living’ or ‘being’ beautiful. The beauty of our existence can prevail only when all the elements of our nature and ecosystems are in balance. The evolution of homo sapiens can continue alongside the beautiful nature around us. In a billion-year-long formation history of Earth, it’s been just a few hundred thousand years of our existence, and we would want at least a couple of thousand more years in our evolutionary cycle.

However, we are stuck with the irony of innovation that sociologists and technicians call the Law of Unintended Consequences or the ‘revenge effects’ of innovation. Every time humanity invents a solution to a specific problem, the problem gets solved, only to evolve into a mutated new form. For example, fast food and a sophisticated lifestyle led to obesity, and a healthy life started becoming a dream; solar panels and EVs led to disposal issues with lithium-ion batteries, and LEDs released quantum dots into the environment, causing it to degrade; cosmetics and pharmaceutical products released per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that will remain forever in the environment and cause diseases; antibiotics led to mutations in disease-causing bacteria and viruses, and now we are stuck with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and viruses, etc.

I picked up these peculiar examples because I am an environmental engineer investigating how AI models can be used to treat wastewater so it can be discharged safely into the environment. These are the obvious concepts an environmental engineer is concerned with: protecting the environment, restoring ecosystem balance, and maintaining a beautiful nature with flora and fauna and a green, blue Earth. These same concerns about balance and consequence are exactly what I carry over when I think about AI’s trajectory.

I think in the same principles when I look at the accelerated development of AI. Along with solving genuine problems, such as Navier-Stokes’ equations and rethinking Einstein’s theory of relativity, the core theme of any AI invention should link to and justify the existence of our beautiful human civilisation, along with other elements of natural evolution. We can work together to redefine and ensure that the aim of AI inventions does not deviate from the goal of altering the balance of nature.

Apart from the ambitious mission to resettle on Mars, we can use AI to locate the missing MH-370 in the Pacific Ocean. Rather than playing mutation voodoo with the coronavirus, we can aim to develop new antibiotics and vaccines for Ebola, HIV, cancer, and other diseases that we have not been able to develop over the last decade. We can deploy robots to farm and turn barren lands into fertile habitats for all, and to explore the unreached deep ocean. There are a thousand ways to explore the potential of AI and related research to do the millions of things we haven’t done yet on Earth, with the ultimate goal of strengthening ecosystems and creating a beautiful, sustainable nature for all.

But the interests do not match when we compete to rule over each other. When we use AI to target missiles at enemy territory, to hack computers and servers to retrieve confidential information, just to ruin others and win over them. Why can’t we use AI to track all of these natural calamities and act proactively to prevent our civilisations from being wiped out? The concern is ‘interest’. Where do the big-money guys who are interested in investing go, and for what return? What else can be more interesting than progressing alongside beautiful nature, with peace and harmony all around? Why do we need to produce chaos, make money, be richer than others, and rule over others, when that is going to harm ourselves in return?

Hence, it’s the need of the time to not see each other as enemies, rivals or competitors for mere money. There are hundreds of examples of people uniting after pain to rise again in a better way. The examples of Japanese progress after the Hiroshima bomb blast, how Americans stood for unity after the 9/11 attack, how the world responded together for rescue and relief operations in the Nepal and Haiti earthquakes, and the rescue efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hence, considering past successful stories in which humanity united to help one another and overcome problems, I don’t think the anxiety brought about by the overwhelming pace of AI invention and development should be a cause for worry. But I am also afraid of all of the ways not to—if they are executed or adopted, and people never stop winning over each other, ultimately ending up destroying each other, is the major concern. This calls for a common agreement on the use of AI that all nations should agree upon and ratify, keeping the faith of preserving humanity and the Earth foremost, and then continuing to progress and explore the unlimited dimensions of the AI revolution, until all the adverse effects it will bring later are resolved as well.