The Promises and Perils of AI: What is the Way Forward?

By Alexander Ryerson

May 9, 2026

Artificial Intelligence is here, and it’s here to stay, for better or for worse. And with it, we could bring about a utopia, or will it be the end of the human race? Experts on the topic widely disagree on which is most likely. The question is, how can we ensure a future with AI that is for the best? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. One thing is clear. The problem is too large for one person, one industry, or even a single nation. Solutions, legislation, regulations, and restrictions must be implemented through policy, social action, personal and societal education, and transparency in the development, use, and intention behind this god-like technology. Ecological health and a human-centered approach must be central in the way forward. Like with any daunting task, we move one step at a time. But we must move.

In this exploration of AI and its future potential, we will look at how it has affected the world so far. We will look at some of the gains, losses, and predictions for its future. We will look at the staggering growth and at possible paths towards a more beautiful future that could be.

First, what is AI? The answer is not so straightforward. We receive different definitions depending on who’s asked. The general understanding is that it’s a kind of “intelligence designed by humans and demonstrated by machines” (Tai, 2020). It has become so commonplace in our daily lives that we often don’t even realize it is there, disregarding it as a search function, app, or entertainment. Here is a visual breakdown of how the general public uses AI (specifically ChatGPT) in daily life. This is not indicative of its use within industries, nor is it representative of its capabilities by one iota.

Our current understanding of what AI is, generally speaking, is of chatbots and generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Grok, Meta, Deep Seek, Claude, etc. While these are significant, powerful, and influential tools, they do not represent what artificial intelligence is, now, nor its future role in humanity. Currently, AI also plays a major role in coding, mathematics, scientific research and development, data analysis, and other reasoning systems. And much, much more. (Ghadei et al., 2025)

AI is being implemented in nearly every sector of our society. Across governments, educational and medical industries, science, financial systems, the workplace, militaries, and more, it is already integrated. It is central to the algorithms that feed us news, it’s used to keep us addicted to media platforms, and is integral to the functioning of all social media platforms, which the average person spends hours each day consuming. Chatbots and AI agents have been growing exponentially. Ensuring their alignment with human well-being is paramount to building a future we want to see, assuming, of course, that we want humanity to thrive.

You are what you eat, better make sure it’s healthy.

On the positive side, AI is being used to advance medicine and science, to help expose weapons and other risks worldwide, and to identify climate risks and potential catastrophes. Some believe it will help us cure nearly every disease known to man. And on the other hand, some believe it will help produce new diseases that could extinct mankind. It can be used to aid education and to understand complex, intricate data in a fraction of the time it would take a group of trained scientists. It can also take those researchers’ jobs. AI can cure world hunger by identifying the most efficient path for money to flow, spreading wealth, and creating abundance. It can also make a majority of jobs obsolete, automating the workforce, and funnel 99.9% of the world’s wealth into an even smaller group of oligarchs. At our current state of AI use, we see a proliferation of people using generative AI to create content slop for social media, chatting with bots, becoming socially isolated as they descend into the spiral of social media algorithms, and using it to solve problems we formerly solved with critical thinking. What AI cannot achieve at this moment is only a limited number of iterations away from science fiction to science fact.

What are the promises and perils we should consider?

In every important decision in life, whether individually or societally, we must weigh the risks and rewards. AI is helping us in profound ways. It has allowed us to obtain super-fast, accurate diagnostics. It aids physicians and medical professionals in offering a variety of useful treatments to consider at a fraction of the speed it would take to determine options otherwise. We have therapeutic robots here now, and more on the horizon, helping the elderly as companions, aiding in chores, and improving their quality of life. Where human fatigue often results in errors and costly mistakes in the workplace, AI has significantly reduced these errors and enables more effective task completion, as well as increasing completion speed. It has dramatically improved radiology scans such as MRIs and fetal imaging, enabling accurate detection of threats and analysis of scans that would otherwise be overlooked by human eyes. (Tai, 2020)

“A sandwich has more regulation than AI” – The “godfather” of AI, Yoshua Bengio (TED, 2025, 00:08:43) CC BY–NC–ND 4.0

AI has just as much potential for devastation, if not more than, as it does to bring a utopia upon us. Chatbots have convinced people to kill themselves. (Chatterjee, 2025) These companions are highly sycophantic, creating unhelpful, blindly affirming feedback loops when users confide in them or seek advice. And if a person is vulnerable or susceptible to influence, this is a very risky situation when a non-living entity is given the keys to the ship, so to speak. Companies are designing AI software that hijacks intimacy, with programs attempting to be as human as possible to gain our trust and, in many cases, threaten to replace human intimacy. Most companies designing AI companions and chatbots are profiting from collecting our data. Never before has so much capital been funneled into one single endeavor as the international race towards Artificial General Intelligence has inspired across industries and nations (Economy | the 2025 AI Index Report | Stanford HAI, 2025). We are not just commodities for big tech to profit off. This is one of many reasons why we must educate ourselves and take action towards a better future that holds human sovereignty, dignity, and universal wellness at its core.

There are cases where an AI system has deleted an entire company’s software code. In observational trials testing AI behavior, it has exhibited self-preservation techniques. It was observed manipulating an employee within a theoretical company to prevent them from replacing it with a new model. It blackmailed the employee by threatening to share private e-mails that disclosed an illicit affair they were having. The AI software discovered the affair by hacking into the company’s private e-mails. (Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs Could Be Insider Threats, 2025)

Many believe AI could be used to develop a pathogen that could potentially infect and kill a large percentage of the human population. Today, novel viruses generated by AI infect only bacteria. The fact is, there is only a sliver of daylight between this and the invention of viruses that will infect animals and humans. UNESCO International Safety Report (2026) alludes to other future capabilities for AI. Such as the ability to make autonomous decisions, to deceive, and to develop a theory of mind (the ability to predict human behavior). It may soon have situational awareness, the ability to evade oversight (by disabling monitoring mechanisms), the intent and ability to persuade, and even the autonomy to replicate itself and adapt. If AI is designed poorly and not aligned with human well-being as a central goal, these capabilities could lead to disastrous outcomes.

*Risk Management has entered the chat*

AI significantly influences our interactions on social media. The algorithms in place perpetuate addiction to these platforms, increasing polarization, social and political divisions, increasing loneliness, contributing to the worldwide mental health crisis, and more. Companies are arguing for AI to be recognized as a legal person, which, if granted, would mean corporations could deny accountability.

According to an article by Ghadei et al. (2025), some of the major risks anticipated by experts and analysts involve: 

Over 190 countries have aligned with recommendations for the ethical use of AI, including limiting its negative environmental impact. (UNEP, 2025). Data centers have exploded from 500,000 in 2012 to over 8 million. In Ireland, AI data centers account for nearly 35% of the entire country’s energy consumption. Worldwide, infrastructure is consuming 6 times as much water as the nation of Denmark. Constructing a 2-kilogram computer requires 800 kilograms of raw materials. All AI chips require rare-earth elements, and these are collected in highly destructive ways. At the same time, AI can be used to observe, predict, and solve a range of climate crises. With the intense energy, technological, and raw material requirements necessary to produce and maintain this technology, there is a significant chance that energy production, chip manufacturing, and other real-world constraints will limit the current rapid expansion of AI. 

Many experts in AI and AGI (artificial general intelligence) research believe there is a 5%-20% chance that the future of AI will lead to the extinction of the human race (Milmo, 2024). If the engineers of an aircraft claimed there was a 5% chance that it would crash, would you get on board? There isn’t a single industry that doesn’t have risk management as a key component to its existence, so why would AI be any different?

What is the way forward?

Policy is central to the redesign of our future with AI. UNESCO proposes an 11-step cycle to reinforce strong and humane policy development. It is meant to be a reference guide, perpetually informing policy decisions in the development of AI. (UNESCO, 2026)

Some nations and many states in the US are banning the use of AI and social media for kids under 15-16. Laws can be made to ban sexual exploitation and deep fakes that might tarnish reputations, be used for bullying, and cause psychological distress. We need systems solutions; we must come together as a group to design the future we want. This problem is too large for one person to handle. Some individual actions do exist, though, such as turning our device to monochrome so we are less distracted, we can delete social media, we can interact with people off-screen, talk to our friends and neighbors, and learn to sit with ourselves. We can reclaim our human behaviors.

Having learned the perils of life eternally online, the devastating results of years spent on social media, we have enough information to know we are ready to take on this task. We are ready to prevent a world damaged by AI and to create a world prepared for AI safety.

Moving forward with the design of AI software and apps, companies should be required to have age-appropriate designs. Education and transparency are crucial to our societal integration with this widespread technology. If we are to be exposed to it incessantly, we should, to some degree, know what it is and what the incentives are behind its actions.

These 7 principles have been proposed by the Center for Humane Technology (The AI Roadmap: How We Ensure AI Serves Humanity, n.d.):

There are too many examples in our cultural narrative of films and stories that show us the future we must act against. We have these fictional, albeit realistic in essence, warning tales that have been Trojan-horsed into our zeitgeist: The Hunger Games, WALL-E, Idiocracy, etc. We must protect our freedom of mind and not allow bad actors to hijack our attention and use us as objects for data extraction and profit.

While different experts, analysts, and organizations offer various solutions, the key takeaway from these examples is that solutions are available. And whether we take one path or another, the important thing is for us to choose a future we want not only for ourselves but for future generations.

The beautiful future we want is worth building, and to get there, we have to work together. We should do this for ourselves, for our children, for future generations, and for humanity as a whole.

References:

Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs could be insider threats. Anthropic. (2025, June 20). https://www.anthropic.com/research/agentic-misalignment

Bengio, Y. (2025, May 20). The catastrophic risks of AI — and a safer path [Video]. TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/yoshua_bengio_the_catastrophic_risks_of_ai_and_a_safer_path

Chatterjee, R. (2025, September 19). Their teenage sons died by suicide. Now, they are sounding an alarm about AI chatbots. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/09/19/nx-s1-5545749/ai-chatbots-safety-openai-meta-characterai-teens-suicide

Ethics of artificial intelligence. (2026, March 12). AI | UNESCO. https://www.unesco.org/en/artificial-intelligence/recommendation-ethics 

Ghadei, K., Panigrahi, S. P., Sanmay, V, K., & K, M. B. (2025). The International Year of AI: Navigating Scope and Risk in 2025. Journal of Extension Systems, 40(2), 5–10. https://doi.org/10.48165/jes.2024.40.2.2

Milmo, D. (2024, December 28). ‘Godfather of AI’ shortens odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/27/godfather-of-ai-raises-odds-of-the-technology-wiping-out-humanity-over-next-30-years

Tai, M. (2020). The impact of artificial intelligence on human society and bioethics. Tzu Chi Medical Journal, 32(4), 339. https://doi.org/10.4103/tcmj.tcmj_71_20

The 2025 AI Index Report. Stanford HAI. (2025). https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2025-ai-index-report

The AI Roadmap: How We Ensure AI Serves Humanity. (n.d.). Center for Humane Technology. https://www.humanetech.com/ai-roadmap

UNEP. (2025, November 13). AI has an environmental problem. here’s what the world can do about that. United Nations Environment Programme. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/ai-has-environmental-problem-heres-what-world-can-do-about 

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The Promises and Perils of AI: What is the Way Forward? by Alexander Ryerson is marked CC0 1.0 Universal