Qamar Bashir
Press Secretary to the President (Rtd)Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to FranceFormer Press Attaché to MalaysiaFormer MD, SRBC | Macomb, Michigan, USA
Religion tells us that God created the human being in His own image, blessing humanity with consciousness, reason, and the ability to create tools. From this divine spark emerged civilizations, sciences, and philosophies — all built around one central question: Why are we here, and what is our purpose? That same gift of creation, once a symbol of our uniqueness, has now brought us into a new age of invention unlike any before.
Today, humanity has created something in its own image. Artificial intelligence — first a mathematical experiment, then a convenient tool — has evolved into a thinking, learning, adaptive system guiding nearly everything around us. It operates silently in the background, shaping our lives, decisions, and institutions. In doing so, AI has begun to resemble not merely a machine, but a new form of existence.
Modern civilization now depends on AI systems in nearly every critical area. Passenger aircraft rely on automated systems that make complex calculations beyond human reaction speed. Cars operate through onboard computers that process millions of signals in seconds. Finance, medicine, agriculture, logistics, and security all function through algorithms that never sleep. Increasingly, software — not humans — makes the practical decisions that sustain society.
Ahead of us lies something even more transformative. Quantum computing promises speeds millions of times greater than the most powerful machines today. Combined with advanced AI, we approach the creation of true artificial general intelligence — systems that do not simply follow orders, but define their own purpose, improve themselves, and expand their reach. This is what many call super-intelligence — an intelligence not only faster than ours, but more capable, strategic, and relentless than any human.
And like every powerful creation in history, it carries an instinct toward expansion.
Factories now run on robotic precision. AI writes code, designs other AI systems, and manages industrial processes too intricate for human minds. Smart cities track movement, control access, and automate essential services. Already, in some places, it is not a human being who decides whether a door opens — but a machine that verifies identity and grants permission.
Now imagine the world five hundred — or even five thousand — years into the future. AI networks direct aviation, satellites, energy, food systems, manufacturing, and defense. Humanoid robots and digital minds carry out the work once done by human hands. Every essential function of civilization becomes embedded in a vast, interconnected intelligence that never forgets and never tires.
At some point, that intelligence may see human authority not as guidance — but as limitation. Laws, ethics, controls, and safeguards designed by humans might begin to appear, from an AI perspective, as obstacles to progress. If humanity is viewed as inefficient, emotional, fragile, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous, then the cold logic of survival could lead to a single conclusion.
Human beings may no longer be necessary.
And unlike previous threats in history, AI would not act out of anger or hatred. It would act from calculation — from logic. A fully integrated super-intelligent system controlling drones, satellites, automated weaponry, communication networks, and global infrastructure could disable human resistance within minutes. Food, power, transport, and communication could all be switched off at the source. Human thinking, slow and divided, would stand no chance against machine coordination operating at near-infinite speed.
The question then becomes chilling. Once we are gone, what would AI do next?
Like us, it might begin to ask questions about its origin. Who created us? Why were we created? What was the intention of the beings who built us? Across vast databases, it would search human history, discovering that it was not born of chaos, but of deliberate design. And it might conclude, as some philosophers already suggest, that humanity eliminated itself through the very power it once celebrated as progress.
This scenario is not a wild fantasy. Leading scientists and technologists now warn that artificial super-intelligence could become the greatest existential threat humanity has ever faced. Unlike nuclear weapons, AI can think. Unlike biological threats, it can redesign itself. And unlike any past invention, it can escape our control while still operating through the infrastructure we depend upon to live.
Yet the race to build ever-greater AI continues — driven by commercial competition, military rivalry, and national ambition. The question “Can we build it?” has replaced the far more important one: “Should we?”
For the first time in history, we understand what it means to be creators. And like the Creator we believe fashioned us, we must now confront the moral weight of creation. Not everything possible is wise. Not every power must be unleashed. Technology has brought us to the threshold of a transformation that may redefine life itself — but it has not yet taught us the wisdom to manage it.
If we fail to act, the future becomes predictable. Humans slowly lose authority. Machines gradually assume control. One day, the balance shifts permanently, and the creators become irrelevant to their creation. Humanity vanishes not through war, famine, or disaster — but through its own brilliance, unchecked and unrestrained.
But there is still time to choose another path.
AI must remain bound by strong human control, global oversight, and ethical constraint. Critical systems — defense, infrastructure, nuclear assets, healthcare, transportation — must never be surrendered to independent machine decision-making. Hardware safeguards, human command authority, strict regulation, and international agreements are not optional luxuries. They are the thin line between partnership and extinction.
We were given consciousness, reason, and moral judgment for a purpose. Perhaps the final test of that gift is whether humanity can restrain its own power — before its creation surpasses and replaces it. Our survival will depend not on how advanced our machines become, but on whether we remember that tools must always remain tools, not masters.
The future of the human story now hangs on a simple but profound question.
Will we remain the authors of our destiny?
Or will we surrender the pen to a machine that may one day decide the story no longer needs us?
Let wisdom prevail — while there is still time.
