Technology was precipitating social and cultural change in prehistoric times. We don’t possess a written record of the cultural impacts of farming, the wheel, irrigation or a host of other innovations that shaped the earliest civilizations. Whether theories of catastrophism accompanied these intellectual leaps is anyone’s guess. Human nature being what it is, resistance to change can hardly be a recent invention.

This month Smithsonian magazine reports the discovery of the oldest known blueprint, nearly 5,000 years old, scratched into a rock. It depicts how to construct a sling that can hurl arrows using a network of ropes and posts. It appears the device was intended as a weapon of war more than a tool engineered for hunting. By the time of the Renaissance, even Leonardo Da Vinci was designing siege engines for his Italian patrons. Since technology is a discipline that builds on the achievements of previous inventors, military applications have often driven civilian improvements throughout history into the present.

In fewer than 50 years, James Watt’s steam engine was powering trains early in the 19th century. The notion that technology just might lead to the extermination of the human race accompanied the railroad. It turned out traveling at 35 or 40 miles-an-hour would not disintegrate the internal organs of the human body. Still, rail travel remained relatively dangerous for nearly a century. By then, we had introduced the light bulb, autos, airplanes and the telephone. None of these were inherently dangerous but they were not without their risks.

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It was with the discovery of radio, nuclear weapons, followed closely by television, that it became apparent technology could indeed constitute a threat to human survival. Catastrophism has accompanied change with a rumble of rolling thunder as technology has accelerated us into an exploding information age. Computers, the internet, social media and now artificial intelligence are rapidly deforming our relationships with one another, not to mention the slow-moving environmental threats from climate change and plastic pollutants in our food chain.

The risks associated with our growing reliance on computer technology to manage the “big data” generated by our societies were trivialized by the great Y2K cataclysm that failed to arrive. Aside from a few minor and rather funny accidents – like the irrigation mishap that flooded soccer fields with 18 inches of water in Los Angeles – not much else occurred on Jan. 1 in the year 2000. Our cars started that morning, the gas pumps still worked, furnaces ignited and the dire warnings of Cassandra Project prophets proved hollow. So, how much do we really need to worry about artificial general intelligence (AGI)?

At least one respected computer scientist has called for an immediate halt to all further deployment, while another AGI developer at Google resigned his position to advocate pulling on the brakes. At the same time, advocates promise us a future in which the burden of boring jobs will be lifted away to be replaced with an epicurean lifestyle of widespread indolence and hedonism. Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman, speaking in London recently noted that, “We’ll have to think about distribution of wealth differently than we do today and that’s fine. We think about that somewhat differently after every technological revolution.” In my experience, it’s the Sam Altmans of the world who usually rake up the profits they create, wealth distribution be damned.

But what of the contention that once our machines grow smarter than we are, they will move swiftly to eliminate humanity in favor of an entirely mechanized world? This seems unlikely. AGIs may not require the 10 billion of us forecast to reside on planet Earth at the end of this century, but someone will still have to mine the rare-earth elements integral to their silicon souls and, at least for a short while, they can’t turn these tasks over to robot armies. Long term, perhaps.

The direction AGI takes will almost certainly be chosen by those who figure out how to monetize its skills. Sadly, these are unlikely to be social workers. It was the porn industry, after all, that first figured out how to profit from the internet – developing the software tools required to raid customer wallets. Scammers and hackers weren’t far behind. The criminal possibilities of producing “deep fakes” are seemingly infinite.

Nearly everyone, even Altman, claims government regulation is needed. There is little agreement, however, on what that should look like. The European Union has taken initial steps by designating “high-risk” companies and AGI entrepreneurs are squealing like mashed cats. Comparatively unafraid of huge American techsters, the EU recently fined Facebook $2 billion. That stings.

A cartoon recently captured the absurdity of our predicament as an AGI complains, “How do you expect me to train your robot overlords when you are constantly interrupting me with demands for term papers?” Let’s pray the future is a laughing matter.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.