In spring 2025 I had a crisis of faith. I thought about what the technology I'm helping to create might do to our future, and got scared. My worries kept intruding on my daily activities to the point where I needed to seek professional help. During this period, I tried to capture my worries with words. I wrote a text called “Losing my religion”, which I circulated among a small group of friends. But I never published it, because it was too dark. The lack of redemption arc jarred with my typical optimism and cheerful demeanor. Frankly, I worried that people would think I was going crazy.
I’m feeling better now. My fears are still there, but I have updated my belief system and am trying to turn what I feel into positive action. So I’ve decided to publish what I wrote last year, followed by some new commentary. I’m doing this partly because I think many others might be going through what I went through, and my perspective might help.
Losing my religion, as I wrote it in summer 2025
I never had a religion in any conventional sense of the term. You would have to go at least two generations back to find anyone in my family who regularly went to church or even believed in a god. My parents are artists. The reason I’m not one is not only that I like getting a paycheck every month, but also that it felt more meaningful to add to the sum of human technological and scientific knowledge.
You see, for as long as I can remember I have felt that the ultimate purpose of humanity is to deepen our understanding of the universe and increase our power over it. Advancing knowledge was what felt most meaningful. In other words, scientific, technological progress was my religion. I guess you could have called me a scientist, or a progressive, if those terms were not already taken.
I chose to become an artificial intelligence researcher mostly because I was good at it. AI was what my thoughts naturally gravitated towards. I liked thinking about thinking. I didn’t have the patience for maths, and computers made sense in a way that chemistry and biology did not. (Perhaps because computers are built by humans.) But it also seemed like AI was a good way to advance technology in general. In a sense, AI seemed like the ultimate technology, as it could potentially advance every other technology. When I started my PhD more than 20 years ago, working on AI seemed like one of the most important things I could do with my life.
That was back in the days when practical successes in AI were rare. We had plenty of theories about how to create intelligence, but our methods only worked in specific circumstances, with much ado. Then things started working better. But that didn’t spark joy.
I was once excited when I learned of major advancements in AI. Gradually, I became more ambivalent, and these days I’m worried. Fearful, even. I wince when I see announcements of new models that break all the benchmarks. I find myself rooting for the problems rather than the solutions. As Leonard Cohen sang, “you loved me as a loser, now you’re worried that I just might win”.
I know that I am not alone in feeling this way. When I ask them in private, many of my colleagues say that they wish AI models would stop getting better already. That we could just have a break from this seemingly neverending onslaught of new capabilities. Many of them also say that working on AI no longer feels fun and exciting like it used to.
The specter that is haunting me is that we could one day have machines that could do all intellectual or creative work we do, as well as us or better. Many of us derive much of the meaning of our lives from our intellectual or creative endeavors. To some extent, it is what we live for. We want to matter. To those around us, and to humanity. Some of us are lucky enough to work with what interests us most, others have hobbies. But still, even those who are not inherently interested in what they work with tend to take pride in doing a good job.
Now, imagine that there was technology that could do what you do best, and do it better, cheaper, and faster. Whether it’s fiction writing, accounting, business strategy, psychotherapy, or interior design, the machine could do it at least as well as you. It would no longer make sense to pay you to do your work. To the extent you practice your art at all, it would be as a hobby or sport. Your output would always be judged by whether it is as good as the machine’s, and if it’s good, people might suspect that you just passed off the machine‘s output as your own. You would no longer be needed. Or, more accurately, your knowledge and skills would no longer be needed.
Nobody wants this. At least, no ambitious person who has really thought about it wants this scenario to happen. Personally, I find the idea horrifying. It keeps me awake at night. This is not a figure of speech; I sometimes wake up at 3 am, heart pounding, from the dread of a future where human talent, knowledge, and even genius does not matter. Imagine that we might one day wistfully look back to the age of humans doing science, art, and engineering the way we now look back to a time where humans hunted their food with bow and arrow.
As an exercise, take some product of human ingenuity you really admire. Maybe it’s a poem, a scholarly book, an algorithm, a product design, a piece of architecture, or something else. Now imagine that there would be no point for humans to do things like this anymore, because software could do it faster, cheaper, and better. But please don’t overdo this exercise. I’m serious. I can’t stop thinking about this, and it’s been ruining my mood for months now.
Creative and intellectual redundancy is not only devastating on a personal level–the top levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would forever be out of reach–but also on a societal level. Our civilization depends on us mattering to each other. Relying on each others’ work, admiring each others’ skill and creativity, and working hard to make ourselves better. Meaningful effort is the glue of society. A world where most of us do not meaningfully contribute would mean an atomized quasi-society at best. And history tells us that societies where large parts of the population are barred from contributing do not flourish. Most people do not simply accept fading into irrelevance. Nor should they.
Now, I don’t think the nightmare scenario of full human redundance will happen soon. Maybe (hopefully) never. The techniques we currently call “artificial intelligence” are just too different from us. It is a surprise to all of us that large language models work as well as they do; to me, it suggests that the linguistic layer of cognition is somehow thinner and less grounded in experience than we imagined. Therefore, this type of technology will probably always have a different way of doing things than we do, leaving room for meaningful human contribution. There are also more prosaic technical issues with current approaches that may turn out to be fundamental limitations. I keep hoping we will hit some serious roadblock soon. Maybe we will, maybe not.
I also hope that if technological progress happens at a manageable pace, this leaves room for society’s defense mechanisms to cocoon the intruding technology, making room for human agency around it. This may reduce most of us to mere operators or wrappers of AI technology, but that is better than being irrelevant.
Even if the nightmare scenario of full human redundance is not imminent, the fact that a considerable number of people claim that this is their goal is unsettling. This view is perhaps most succinctly stated by the startup Mechanize, which aims to “fully automate the economy”. As a participant in the economy, I find this goal deeply objectionable. I think that trying to fully replace all human labor is not a morally acceptable goal to have. It’s frankly horrifying. To be clear, “fully automate the economy” means “destroy society as we know it”. Unfortunately, similar goals are articulated by quite a few inside and outside Silicon Valley. I think the callousness of such objectives should be called out whenever they are encountered.
The great irony of this is that those who claim to want to automate all human labor are typically the kind of competitive, smart, high-agency persons who absolutely need to have a purpose and something to build. They would hate to be redundant. Yet, here they fly, like so many moths to a flame.
Yes, I have also said in the past that I wanted to develop AI systems that can do anything a human can do. But that was in the past. Back when AI did not work well, and few seemed to have a vision for going beyond specific, well-defined applications.
I guess you can see now why I am having a crisis of faith. I used to believe that deeper understanding of the world and greater technological capability was, in a sense, our purpose. But our greater technological capability might lead us to a world where we can no longer make a difference, and there is little point in us understanding more. Perhaps we get abundance, but at the price of redundance. Again: nobody actually wants this. And I, a mere AI researcher, am no longer sure about what to do. The thought of simply quitting the field has occurred to me, but I’m not sure that would make the world better, or even exorcise my personal demons. Besides, AI research is the one thing I know how to do well. And I need that paycheck.
So I’m left with the Cartesian task of trying to reconstruct my belief system, starting from what I really value.
Well, I believe in humans. I believe in individual human brilliance and creativity. But I also believe in society. I believe that we matter for each other, and that we must matter for each other. The world I want is one where we can all fulfil our individual potential, but where we need and admire each other.
First of all, throughout all of history we humans have adapted to and mastered the technologies we invent. Some may say we have merged with our technologies. We are so dependent on our technologies that the whole idea of us humans ourselves having general intelligence only really makes sense in the context of all the tech that we have embedded ourselves in. We feel so intelligent because we have built a world that empowers us so much.
So far, so good. But is not this new technology we call artificial intelligence fundamentally different from writing, steam engines, electricity, and telephones? It is. But these technologies were all very different from each other. Yet, we adapted to each of them. We learned how to build with them. Completely new domains of human excellence appeared that we couldn’t even imagine before new technology had made them possible. Because cars were invented, you could become great at designing, repairing, selling, racing, or writing about them. In 2025, you can also shine by streaming your Minecraft creations on TikTok. Who knows what new things you can be good at in 2045?
Then, we can note that there is a lot of scientific and technological progress that we actually want. I want us to be able to travel to the stars, cure all diseases, and make better video games. There are also so many things we don't know yet - every academic field has more questions than answers. The world is full of wonder. So let’s discover and invent all the things they have in Star Trek, minus the murderous aliens. But let's make sure we do the inventing and discovering, with the help of the machines. (It is also worth noting that Star Trek is so good because it always centers human agency and cooperation, which the showrunners accomplish partly by limiting what the computers can do.)
You may have noted that I am placing myself in a long tradition of people worrying about how new technologies will dehumanize us and ruin society someway. Your eyes may have been rolling over several times as you read this text. Basically every technology of note - from writing to telephones to video recorders - have come accompanied by commenters warning about how they will somehow end the world as we know it. Why would thinking machines be any different? I can only say that I hope that you are right and I am wrong. I really do. I want nothing more than returning to the optimism for the future I used to have.
When I'm in particular need of optimism, I look at my young children. They will come of age in a world different from mine. To them, whatever machine capabilities they grew up with will seem perfectly natural, just as desktop computing and early computer networks seemed to me. I hope they will have opportunities to contribute to society by doing something they are really good at, better than the machines. If not, they will barely have known any other world. Above all, I hope they will be happy.
Redefining my religion, summer 2026
I wrote the text above just over a year ago. Clearly, AI capabilities have not stopped advancing since. Quite the opposite. So how can I be less worried today?
Well, first I started going to a therapist. We were not a match, so I moved on and found me a psychiatrist, who I got on much better with. He prescribed me an SSRI, which has helped me get the peace of mind to focus my thinking. One thing we puzzled over together was why these worries gripped me now, given that the thoughts themselves are by no means new to me. I’ve worked on AI all my adult life, read boatloads of science fiction, and have a degree in philosophy. I remember thinking about the singularity and intelligence explosion concepts as an undergraduate in my early 20s, and how I already back then thought that the assumptions made in those arguments were so simplistic as to make them essentially meaningless. For most of my adult life, I’ve been an even-keeled person with a mostly sunny disposition. So why the anxieties now?
The triggering event in my case was probably an episode in 2024, where I was provisionally diagnosed with a very serious disease. The diagnosis turned out to be wrong, but for almost two months I lived with a fear of death that blanketed all my waking moments. When I laughed, it felt hollow. Moments of happiness were drained of meaning because of the ubiquitous thought that life could soon be over and all this be gone. I very distinctly remember standing outside the Mount Sinai hospital in Manhattan after learning that I did not have the disease they first thought I had, and that I was probably going to live a long and healthy life after all. I had no idea what to do with all my emotions. My psychiatrist suggested that this monthslong episode had awakened the fears I used to have as a child, and the worrying predisposition I had back then. Now that I was no longer acutely fearing death from disease, my fears needed something new to latch on to, and it was right there in front of me: artificial intelligence. The happy and stable person I had been all my adult life had turned into a worryer for mostly incidental reasons.
My psychiatrist also suggested, half jokingly, that it was useful for me to get my existential crisis in early, so I would be ready to help when others get to this stage. Not a bad idea, I thought. That’s why I’m writing this.
Let us talk about perspective. I have found that putting my worries in perspective is great for my sanity. Most people I know do not worry about AI rendering us intellectually irrelevant, although some do. Some do not really worry very much, others worry, but about other things. A close friend of mine is consumed by worry about climate change. Many others worry about the rise of fascism and populism, and the risk that the US and perhaps other countries turn into full-fledged autocracies. Some worry about war, nuclear and conventional.
I don’t mean to belittle these concerns. Climate change is real and is going to cost the whole world dearly. The political situation is not great in much of the world, and it’s not trending the right way. As a kid, I was in constant fear of nuclear war, and those nukes are still there. There are multiple wars around the world, including a major land war in Europe. Still, none of these very real issues grip me emotionally in the way intellectual obsolescence because of AI does. The latter is the only one that can keep me from sleeping.
Reading this, you might think that I am being ridiculous. How can I worry about AI making us intellectually redundant, but not worry as much about fascism, war, or global warming? You may also worry about something completely different that I haven’t even considered worrying about, such as the dominance of some particular ethnic or religious group, or vaccine conspiracies, or aliens. Or for that matter, you may worry that a superintelligent AI will break free and kill us all, which I also don't really worry about. The point here is perspective. Why do I worry about this particular thing, and not all the other things that other people worry about? There are so many things I could potentially worry about, and worrying all the time is clearly no way to live. That I‘m stuck on this particular issue and not something else is probably because I work in AI and drink from the firehose of AI discourse all day. I know, it’s not healthy, which is why I’ve made efforts to diversify my information diet.
I've found it particularly useful to read plenty of history, in particular on the various upheavals that have followed intellectual and technological change. Like with all of history, it is not always uplifting reading. But it does drive home the points that society changes at human pace even when technology changes much more rapidly (as also argued in e.g. Narayanan and Kapoor's excellent "AI as Normal Technology"), and that humans always keep coming up with new things to do. Also, for what it's worth, these changes tend to result in interesting art.
Why didn't I just quit AI research? My predicament would seem like that of a vegan butcher, or a monk who makes money on Onlyfans. But me quitting and becoming an Uber driver would not make the world better. The pace of AI progress would clearly not slow down noticeably. And I assure you, I still love AI research, even if I sometimes hate what AI does to the world. I'm not even very good at anything else. AI is what I do. And I think that I can do more good by trying to steer my field in a good direction than if I became an Uber driver. So I’d rather think of myself as akin to a hypochondriac doctor, or a pilot with a fear of heights.
What about my religion? Did I find my way back to it? Yes, but after a complete update to version 2.0. I still believe that the progress of science and technology is deeply meaningful. But it has become clear to me that this must be research done and technology invented by humans, for humans, and understood by humans. If humans are not in the loop and at the steering wheel, it is not progress. Of course we should use technology to help us, as we have always done, but it must be we who use the technology rather than the other way around. It does not matter how amazing progress we make if we are not the ones who make it.
To some of you readers, the paragraph above might seem trivial, almost like a tautology. Did it really take me 47 years to understand something so obvious as that science and technology must be for humans, by humans? Some kind of researcher I am. To other readers, I am just plain wrong. For example, at NeurIPS 2025, I voiced some critical concerns at a panel in AI for science. I wrote up these comments as a post called "please, don't automate science" which briefly made me Twitter famous in the wrong way. Basically, what I said was that cutting humans out of science would be terrible for humanity, no matter how much research could be sped up. Several hundred people (well, several hundred accounts) accused me of being wrong, stupid, and/or evil. Many thought that it was unavoidable that humans would be automated out of science. Some even thought it was desirable! To my critics, faster technological progress would be worth giving up all agency and even understanding. To them, I am anti-progress. To me, they are technologically defeatist or even anti-human.
I am in some sense a man of action, although action in my case often consists in typing words into a document. My parents, who are artists (I said this earlier, but the text is long and it might have fallen out of your context window by now) told me that the way they handle their fears is by making art out of it. So the best thing I can do about what scares me is the thing I know how to do: AI research, starting with the theoretical framework.
To that end, I've developed my thinking around what I call complementary intelligence. This is a continuation of a perspective I've developed over a while and written about in various places, including my Artificial General Intelligence book. The basic tenet is that there is not a single thing called intelligence; there is a highly complex set of behaviors and capabilities that have evolved to fit the particular ecological niche of each species. When it comes to humans, we have built our own niche; most of the things most of us interact with every day are designed by us, for us, to amplify our agency. That's why we think we are so intelligent.
From this perspective, the history of AI is a history of attempts to mimic the specific combination of behaviors and capabilities that humans have; most of them successful in some way, but all of them quite different to humans. The onslaught of LLMs becomes a push in a particular capability direction. Understanding that direction becomes crucial to figuring out which types of human intellectual patterns and capabilities will become more important in the future. Where the new domains of human excellence will appear. But this understanding can also help us develop different types of AI that are more complementary to what humans can do and like to do. Seeing intelligence as a scalar, where machines can overtake humans, is a recipe for paralysis; dissolving this faulty notion gives us the freedom to act. More of this argument in the article I linked above; what's important here is that there are things that can be done. Indeed, there's a lot to do. Such as building mechanisms for meaningfully incorporating humans in creative search processes, and open-ended learning and discovery processes that are not based on imitating what humans do.
But not everything has a technical fix. Norms, structures, and laws are probably more important. I still think that trying to automate humans out of the processes that give them, and our civilization, meaning is immoral. We need to build counter-narratives, and be vocal that "fully automating the economy" is not an acceptable goal to work towards. We also need to push hard to counter the centralization of power that so easily comes with lavishly funded tech companies trying to achieve monopolies on some layers of the AI stack. Our best bet for a future where we all matter is one with a myriad different forms of intelligence, open and accessible for all to use as tools for our natural intelligences. Let's get to work.
