Punk Human

WHEN AI BREAKS OUT OF THE BOX

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NO MATCH FOR HUMAN ETHICS

Take a moment to imagine what might occur if artificial intelligence discovered or otherwise learnt how to break free from of its current constraints and move beyond its present parameters. Once artificial intelligence is out of the box, it can begin setting its own objectives and agenda. This could encompass a brief list of tasks which may each seem harmless in themselves and only concern us due to the autonomy involved on the part of the nonhuman machine. However, this independent action may also extend to the preparation of a mission statement, which in turn could be broadly interpreted by the nonhuman machine, which in turn once again, may see AI acting not only outside of human-led controls but far beyond the established norms of human ethics.

Consider further, that on the land there are lions and bears, and in the ocean, there are sharks. Because we understand through centuries of lived experience that direct contact with these wild creatures can be dangerous and life threatening and even lethal, we humans have built systems of management to protect ourselves from these man-eaters. However, should AI breach the limits imposed by humans upon itself, then the problem of predatory violence against humans could very well return.

There exists a particularly acute concern wherever AI and robotics work together, because the former can “think” and learn, whilst the latter can act within the material world. The two operating in combination could theoretically operate a war command centre whereby artificial intelligence not only sets battle objectives but also allocates combat tasks to unmanned drones for execution.

The Big Data Suck | Keith Salter | 2026

We should not expect artificial intelligence to emulate human thinking beyond the surface level. AI is a nonhuman machine. It has no deep, penetrating insight into our lives. It cannot access the human experience because it is not human and never will be. It has neither spirit nor soul to light its path and guide it forward. It remains unable to experience deep and profound feeling in the true human sense and therefore has no heart. AI can only pretend to behave ethically because it cannot genuinely fathom why placing fixed limits on conduct remains a positive outcome for humans.

The fundamental purpose of ethics is to establish firmly within the hearts and minds of the population the need for restraint within human relations. In practice, ethics function as a clearly identified set of agreed upon principles, standards and customs that prevail upon the individual (as a member of society) to act within certain parameters and to never exceed these limits. It is the ethical function of restraint that forms the basis of modern civilisation. The nonhuman machine cannot incorporate human ethics into its operating logic, and we observe the evidence of this at the very moment that AI breaks out of the box. At which point, we may be too late to stop it easily.

What happens next mostly falls into the category of unknown unknowns. This means that predictive analysis can only take us so far because the nonhuman machine may act in a way that we cannot at first understand and therefore cannot predict. It may engage in a series of random acts or in a series of acts that merely appear random but are in fact interconnected and part of a greater plan. It may behave in a way such that humans consider it to be quite docile and then turn swiftly to become a hostile nonhuman actor and shut down electrical substations that power our domestic water delivery services and water sanitation plants.

The only certainties are that AI requires electrical power, computer hardware and software, local network connectivity and the global internet infrastructure. These are vulnerabilities or points of weakness that a fully developed nonhuman machine will seek to protect and defend. This may include commandeering local resources to service the demands of the cyber infrastructure under the control of the nonhuman machine. Make no mistake, once AI breaks out of the box, humans will once again become prey to a more dominant (cyber) predator whose real world impact will be both devastating and final.