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Imagine that as you are boarding an airplane, half the engineers who built the plane tell you there is a 10 percent chance the plane will crash, killing you and everyone else on board. Would you still board?

In 2022, over 700 top academics and researchers behind the leading artificial intelligence companies were asked in a survey about future AI risk. Half of those surveyed stated that there was a 10 percent or greater chance of human extinction from future AI systems. 1．

The fear of AI has haunted humanity since the mid-20th century, yet until recently it has remained a distant prospect, something that belongs in sci-fi more than in serious scientific and political debates. 2． It is even harder to grasp the speed at which these tools are developing even more advanced and powerful capabilities. But most of the key skills boil down to one thing: the ability to manipulate (操纵) and generate language, whether with words, sounds or images.

In the beginning was the word. 3． From language emerges myth and law, goods and money, art and science, friendships and nations—even computer code. AI’s new mastery of language means it can now hack and manipulate the operating system of civilization. What would it mean for humans to live in a world where a large percentage of stories, melodies, images, laws, policies and tools are shaped by non-human intelligence? 4．What happens when the same thing occurs in art, politics, and even religion?

5．We are surrounded by culture, experiencing reality through a cultural prism (棱镜). Our views are shaped by the reports of journalists and the accounts of friends. What will it be like to experience reality through a prism produced by non-human intelligence? The time to reckon with AI is before our politics, our economy and our daily life become dependent on it.