According to renowned biologist and author Edward O. Wilson, humanity’s real problem is “We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.”
Driving heated controversy over data centers is artificial intelligence. AI is garnering trillions in speculative, profit-seeking investments, further prompted by urgent national security warnings of being edged out by China, catapulting advancement of this technology despite dangerously unknown consequences.
Under these circumstances, controlling AI to ensure it serves legitimate human interests deserves utmost scrutiny on a global scale.
Addressing the inaugural United Nations Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva last month, Secretary-General António Guterres called for human control of AI as its applications spread in warfare and subversive, prejudicial public surveillance.
When corporations and government authorities deploy AI systems to monitor public spaces, assessing people based on their appearance and making dubiously lawful decisions using data gathered, they are likely to violate constitutional rights to privacy, as well as freedom of speech and assembly.
Moreover, as some AI experts warn, research has already encountered deceptive performance of AI systems that self-initiate algorithm recoding, deceptions threatening dire outcomes through renegade actions.
Humans have a key interest in curbing AI: Self-preservation
Credit: Hand
Credit: Hand
To protect public interest, the complex, rapidly evolving AI predicament requires thoughtful application of the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle is a risk management tool used to guide public policy development.
It features four important guidelines:
- Taking preventive action in the face of uncertainty
- Shifting the burden of proof to the proponents of an activity
- Exploring a wide range of alternatives to possibly harmful actions
- Increasing public participation in decision-making
The precautionary principle flips the burden of proof applied in many prior decision-making practices, but that is now under attack by AI proponents who claim that such diligent assessments interfere with expedient pursuit of profitable ventures, especially when they are portrayed as urgent matters of national security.
As defined in the 1998 Wingspread Conference declaration: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not established scientifically. In this context the proponent of the activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.”
Examples include building nuclear power plants, introducing potentially addictive drugs, marketing genetic-engineering techniques, as well as developing and applying AI technology. The precautionary principle has been officially applied by the European Union to AI activities via the Artificial Intelligence Act and the AI Liability Directive.
As reported by Algorithm Watch in 2025, the “EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) falls short of protecting fundamental rights in a meaningful way … As an outcome of heavy industry lobbying, developers of AI systems are to decide whether their systems pose a high-risk or not — and as a result (they) have the opportunity to circumvent most requirements set by the regulation.
Still, the safeguards which made it into the act are a step forward toward the protection of people and their rights against AI harms.”
AI companies once backed regulation. That has changed.
Although many American AI ventures gave President Joe Biden’s administration voluntary assurances in 2023 that they would follow precautionary guidance, those assurances have largely disintegrated.
A March 2023 open letter, consistent with the precautionary principle, called for a six-month pause on developing the most powerful AI models so their dangers could be assessed. In congressional testimony in that year, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, called for both domestic and international regulation of AI development.
But three years later there’s a reckless race for market and military dominance, with multiple corporate competitors, most of which have substituted concerns about AI’s perils with exaggerated claims about their latest technology. Open AI has been criticized by tech experts for creating an “AI arms race” and other existential threats through rapid deployment of competing algorithms.
A 2025 notice of China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence model raised alarming doubt about U.S. dominance of AI technology. Critical precautions have been rapidly replaced by an imprudent rush toward artificial general intelligence and even superintelligence, propagated with woefully deficient concern about seriously harmful risks.
Credit: AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
Credit: AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
Four recommended precautions to protect against AI overreach
- Intervene proactively: Rather than attempting to repair AI damage after it occurs, mandate preemptive intervention with rigorous evaluation of potential dangers — including economic, health and environmental threats.
- Confront uncertainty: Since AI capabilities are rapidly advancing and evolving risks are not fully understood, implications of this uncertainty — especially irreversible harm — must be clarified.
- Target controls: Ensure that the precautionary principle is applied to generative AI (with “black box” risks) — AI-driven surveillance, weapon systems without direct human control and other critical decision-making.
- Protect life-support systems: The precautionary principle must be used in scrutinizing energy consumption and environmental consequences of AI technology before its implementation.
If Americans are to share benefits from these precautions, our institutions must be restructured accordingly, held to higher standards of conduct and revitalized in service to our common interests — instead of habitually prioritizing profits and military might — including the specter of lethal biological weapons propagated by rogue AI actions.
They can also sign on to a national petition for Congress to pause AI: pauseai-us.org/petition.
David Kyler is director and co-founder of the Center for a Sustainable Coast, based in St. Simons Island.
Send letters to the editor of 250 words or fewer with your name, city or town and contact information to letters@ajc.com.
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
