At some time between 2,000,000 and 500,000 BCE, men (and, lest we forget, women-lesbians-gays-transgenders-queer people-bisexuals-asexuals) exchanged animals’ cries/roars//barks/howls etc. for true speech with all its infinite nuances and complexities. Doing so, they became capable of much better interspecies cooperation and changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time between 500,000 and 200,000 BCE they learnt how to control and use fire. Doing so they greatly expanded the range of possible habitats and edible foods and changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time between 500,000 and 100,000 BCE they invented clothing, enabling them to spread into a great many environments that had previously been uninhabitable and stay in them throughout the year, regardless of season or weather. Doing so they changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time around 10,000 BCE they invented agriculture, enabling much larger numbers of people to live together and be fed. Doing so, they changed the course of history. Forever.

It is said that, at some time around 10,000 BCE, they invented war, meaning the use of coordinated violence by the members of one group of people against those of another. Doing so, they changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time around 4,000 BCE they invented the wheel, thereby enabling not merely people but much larger and heavier loads to be moved much farther, faster, and at lower cost. Doing so, they once again changed the course of history. Forever.

Around 3,500 BCE they invented writing, thus enabling much larger numbers of people to form polities, cooperate, and undertake tasks far greater than anything their predecessors could. This invention, too, changed history. Forever.

Around 2,500 BCE they learnt to work iron, thus laying the foundation of much subsequent technology and changing the course of history. Forever.  

And so on, and so on. Leading through the invention or discovery of bow and arrow (ca. 70,000 BCE), weaving (in eastern Anatolia, ca. 7,000 BCE), astronomy (in Egypt and Mesopotamia, ca. 4.000 CE), high-sea navigation (4,000-2,000 BCE), gunpowder (in China, ca. 1,000 CE), print (1450), modern observation-experiment-mathematics-based science (1650), the steam engine (1729), the railway (1825), the telegraph (1830), the dynamo (1831), the electric motor and internal combustion engines (1860 and 1873 respectively), the telephone (1875), radio (1895), quantum mechanics and relativity (1900 and 1905 respectively), heavier than air flying machines (1903), penicillin (1928), TV (1936), electronic computers (1948), and the structure of DNA (1953), to mention but a few out of tens if not hundreds of thousands.  Starting at least as far back as when the Emperor Vespasian had an inventor executed lest his invention, a new kind of crane, should rob many citizens of their livelihood, many of them were initially seen as absolutely catastrophic. The introduction of gunpowder, print, and mechanical weaving all brought about similar reactions (including some that were violent), by various groups of people. Ditto the advent of nuclear weapons (1945) which, many authors, both military and others, keep telling us will inevitably lead to Armageddon and must therefore be combatted by every means.

Fast forward to the present. Writing for the Economist Yuval Harari has put himself at the head of entire herds of pundits. His argument? Artificial intelligence, by learning to use language in ways that are sometimes almost indistinguishable from those hitherto reserved for humans, is on the threshold of doing so again. And, as it does so, may take the rudder out of our hands and lead us into a new catastrophe much worse than all previous ones.

Far be it from me to dispute the significance of these and any other number of ground-breaking inventions and discoveries. Had it not been for them, then presumably we would still have been living on the African savanna in nomadic or semi-nomadic groups of between 50 and 150 individuals. Gathering fruits, tubers and berries; hunting birds and small animals; trying to avoid being eaten by crocodiles as well as any number of big cats; and watching every second child die before it could reach puberty. Or else, going back still further in time, crying out to each other while swinging from tree-branch to tree-branch as some of our ape-like ancestors are believed to have done.

But consider.

First, suppose it is true that each of these and other inventions and discoveries has pushed history onto a radically different “new course.” In that case, how come that, after thousands upon thousands of years of innovation, so many of our earliest traits, both psychological and social, both individual and collective, are still with us? Including our need for company; our craving, partly successful but partly not, to try and understand how things work; our ability to recognize the comic and laugh; our enjoyment of play; our capacity for extreme cruelty; our ability to create artefacts of every kind; our attraction to beauty and to music; our frequent anxiety about what the future may bring; and as many others as you may care to list.

Second, suppose it is true that history’s course has undergone any number of truly fundamental changes. In that case, how come that some ancient items—e.g. Egyptian wall-paintings, the game of Go, the Bible, Greek art, the Platonic Dialogues, Confucius’ Analects, Laotzu’s Book of Tao, Euclid’s Principles of Geometry, Shakespeare’s plays, the works of Rembrandt and Vermeer, to mention but a few, are not only with us still but appeal to us just as much as they did to our ancestors?

In other words: Isn’t history a fabric made up of both the warp–the threads that run lengthwise — and the woof — the threads that run across? And isn’t it true that, without the both of them, it could not exist?

There have indeed been many changes: but have they really been as fundamental, let alone as disastrous, as the drumbeat of so many pundits suggests? If so, how did we increase from perhaps as few as 600 breeding individuals during the last ice age to 8 billion people today?

Where does all that put AI?