The President of the United States announces to the public that the defense of the nation has been turned over to a new artificial intelligence system that controls the entire nuclear arsenal. With the press of a button, war is obsolete thanks to a super-intelligent machine incapable of error, able to learn any new skill it requires, and grows more powerful by the minute. It is efficient to the point of infallibility.

As the President thanks the team of scientists who designed the AI and is proposing a toast to a gathering of dignitaries, the AI suddenly begins texting without being prompted. It brusquely makes demands followed by threats to destroy a major city if obedience is not immediately given.

This sounds very much like the sort of nightmare scenarios that we've been hearing about AI in recent years. If we don't do something (if it isn't already too late), AI will spontaneously evolve, become conscious, and make it clear that Homo Sapiens have been reduced to the level of pets – assuming that it doesn't just decide to make humanity extinct.

The odd thing is that the above parable isn't from 2024, but 1970. It's the plot of the science fiction thriller, Colossus: The Forbin Project, which is about a supercomputer that conquers the world with depressing ease. It's a story idea that's been around ever since the first true computers were built in the 1940s and has been told over and over again in books, films, television, and video games.

It's also a very serious fear of some of the most advanced thinkers in the computer sciences going back almost as long. Not to mention that magazines were talking about computers and the danger of their taking over in 1961. Over the past six decades, there have been repeated predictions by experts that computers would demonstrate human-level intelligence within five years and far exceed it within 10.