This feeling of dread seems to occur every time there's a leap forward in technology or another event that threatens to change the world in unpredictable ways.

In every case, we successfully managed the transition and emerged a more advanced civilization.

People feared domesticated plants, the printing press, the mechanical loom, formal education, radio, the automobile, nuclear tech, and so on. Socrates had misgivings about written language because of all the harm it might cause. I'm sure the same thoughts were had about the domestication of fire a million years ago.

In living memory, people cried doomsday about overpopulation, crop failure, mass starvation, and nuclear annihilation. In time, those fears were replaced by fear of acid rain, the ozone hole, deforestation, even the plastic rings on a 6 pack. Now we hear it's CO2, plastics, rising seas, population collapse, wokeism, and AI.

Yet here we are, stronger than ever.