Several highly respected prominent thinkers such as Elon Musk and the English physicist Stephan Hawking have warned that the creation of AGI, artificial general intelligence, which can quickly self-mature to a powerful  control of all human civilization to leave humanity helpless in its power, represents a danger to human civilization that is far greater than the threats of planetary global warming or the misuse of nuclear weaponry that can alter this planet so completely that humanity and much of other life cannot recover. Since this development remains within the future of possibly a few or even many decades ahead, its occurrence is still very theoretical and unresolved. Some digital experts have declared that they feel the huge advance of artificial superior intellect is so valuable and yet, controllable, that there is no real danger. But even in its current primitive state, it has occasionally provided solutions to difficult problems that were beyond the understanding of the experts in control. This is a clear demonstration that this area of research can present problems that lie beyond  the control of the experts investigating them.

Technological advances throughout history have magnified the human powers of observation and strength and general capability immensely  and quite frequently have initiated  fundamental  changes in the way people relate to each other and to the way human possibilities integrate with natural forces. This has provided opportunities for the human species to multiply and control wide fundamental relationships of the way all life on the planet deals with its opportunities and threats. But the huge negative consequences of these worldwide agendas with small if any understanding as to how the vast mosaic of the forces of nature and life on the planet are sensitive to immense violations of the necessary restrictions to enlarged human activities now endanger necessary fundamentals of planetary life.

Many of the surges of technological development throughout human history have been fostered by the governmental finances  which funded discrete innovations in military capabilities to provide advanced weaponry in the use of  metals and chemistries of fuels and explosives and innovations of novelties of organization and communication. Especially within my own lifetime subsequent to the first world war the growth of self powered vehicles, of aviation, radio and television, and electronics that opened vast avenues of personal communication and information with offering machine automation plus the digital networks with independent self-control  which provides an infrastructure ripe for takeover by both machine intelligence and or various nefarious criminal activities. This growing assailability exists right now and daily reports of vital activities in hospitals and finance and major corporate and government organizations indicate horrifying vulnerabilities that provide fertile opportunities that could easily result in major national and world catastrophes.

These concerns when placed in the background of unsupervised innovative developments probably do not even require extensive leaps of experimental developments, intended or accidental, into an independent artificial general intelligence, if it is free to utilize these current resources on its own initiative. This is a problem today, right now. There are very skilled criminal and governmental and business groups throughout the world regularly hacking through the protective software of sensitive activities who assuredly are familiar with the current advances in artificial general intelligence  which only requires the initial seed of self development to grow rapidly into a digital plague that will make the Covid-19 insignificant in comparison.