Prolific author and biochemist, Isaac Asimov, apparently foresaw the advent of Artificial Intelligence or AI and the challenges posed by the machine to humankind.
Asimov, according to an article in El Pais, titled "Isaac Asimov’s disturbing message for 21st-century humankind", about the documentary Isaac Asimov, A Message to the Future (2022), by French director Mathias Théry, imagined a society managed by interconnected computers. Asimov, according to El Pais, was worried about an ecological crisis caused by pollution and the extinction of species, which only international cooperation could solve, and he foresaw the dilemmas that would arise from the coexistence between people and intelligent machines. Regarding this last matter, he saw two possible outcomes: AI systems taking our jobs and leaving us destitute, or freeing us from painful or routine tasks, allowing us to develop our creativity. We still do not know which of these two directions the future will take.
According to a back-dated story in News In France, with Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick, Asimov contributed to making science fiction a vast field of imagination, capable of clearing the future of humanity, to warn man about his potential extinction. Mathias Théry's documentary is a magnificent tribute to the author, it says.
Asimov considers Frankenstein the first modern science fiction book. Published in 1818, it depicts a scientist who creates life from electricity. Which brings him closer to God. But the creature rebels. This is the beginning of mad scientists, what Asimov baptizes “Frankenstein Complex” a theme that depicts an arrogant humanity eager to put on the mantle of the divine through misguided science.
By establishing the three laws of robotics, he does useful work for all scientists, past and present. He predicts the advent of computing and artificial intelligence and wants us to understand that “we cannot afford to waste financial and emotional resources on endless meaningless conflicts”. To meditate, the News In France story noted.
