“The real danger is not that AI will become human. The real danger is that it may reveal how little humanity we are willing to protect.” – MJ Martin
Introduction
The true danger of artificial intelligence may not be that it becomes unlike us, but that it becomes too much like us. Inspired by the article “The true danger of AI may lie in its reflection of us,” which discusses Anna Goldsworthy’s reflections on artificial intelligence, art, and humanity, this paper considers a darker possibility. AI is not simply an external machine threatening human civilization from the outside. It is a mirror, a system trained on our language, our culture, our fears, our ambitions, and our failures. If there is a devil in the machine, it may be because there is already one within us.
AI as a Mirror
For decades, popular culture imagined artificial intelligence as a monster. From Frankenstein to HAL 9000, we told stories about creations that would turn on their creators. Yet these stories may reveal more about human anxiety than machine intention. AI absorbs the material we give it. It learns from our literature, arguments, prejudices, instructions, and desires. It does not arrive from another universe with alien values. It is made from human data.
This is why the danger is so unsettling. AI reflects our contradictions back to us at scale. It can help cure disease, write music, improve productivity, and expand knowledge. It can also amplify manipulation, vanity, misinformation, surveillance, and greed. The machine is not morally innocent, but neither are we. It becomes powerful because we have filled it with ourselves.
The Friction of Being Human
Goldsworthy’s argument is especially compelling because she connects AI to art, the body, and human limitation. Art matters because it contains difficulty. As Igor Stravinsky observed, “the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.” Human creativity is not weakened by limits. It often depends on them.
AI tempts us with the dream of eliminating friction. It promises instant essays, instant images, instant answers, and instant music. Yet a life without struggle may not be a richer life. Oliver Burkeman’s observation that “the presence of problems is not an impediment to a meaningful existence but the very substance of one” speaks directly to this issue. Problems are not merely obstacles. They are part of how we develop judgment, patience, humility, and character.
The machine can simulate the result, but it does not experience the ache of effort. It does not know hunger, grief, fatigue, love, fear, or mortality. Nietzsche described the ear as “the instrument of fear,” reminding us that art enters through the body. AI can describe fear, but it does not tremble. It can write about beauty, but it does not weep.
The Devil Within Us
The danger of AI is not simply technical. It is spiritual, cultural, and ethical. If we use AI to avoid thinking, it will make us shallower. If we use it to deceive, it will make deception easier. If we use it to exploit attention, labour, and trust, it will strengthen the worst parts of society. The devil is not that AI wants to corrupt us. The devil is that it may give us better tools to corrupt ourselves.
The Shostakovich joke about the musicologist, the person who talks about scrambled eggs without cooking or eating them, applies here. AI can talk brilliantly about the eggs, but it has never tasted them. That difference matters. Human beings remain accountable because we live inside consequences. We suffer, choose, fail, repair, and begin again.
Summary
Artificial intelligence may become one of the most powerful technologies humanity has ever created, but its greatest danger may be reflective rather than alien. It shows us what we value, what we ignore, and what we are willing to automate. The question is not only whether AI can become more human. The question is whether humans can become more humane while using it. The devil is within us, but so is the conscience capable of restraining it.
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin in a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.