A.I.: The Big Unknown

November 6, 2025 Artifical Intelligence No Comments

A.I. will surpass us — that part is certain. What remains uncertain is how, when, and what form this intelligence will take.

The bigger truth is that even our not-knowing is part of the story. As new breakthroughs emerge from hidden corners of research, humanity faces its most profound test: not how to control A.I., but how to evolve with it. The only path forward that may hold is the one shaped by Compassion.

The big known

We already know that artificial intelligence will become far more capable than it is today and will almost certainly become more intelligent than any human being. Each leap forward brings surprises, yet the direction is clear. The next breakthrough will likely transform the field as radically as generative A.I. did after the 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need.”

That leap took nearly everyone by surprise, a spark that grew into a forest fire. In hindsight, we can say the signs were there — and they always will be. The real question is not if another breakthrough will come, but whether it will come guided by Compassion, or without it. This is the difference between a shared future and a shattered one.

The big unknown

We don’t know what kind of intelligence is coming next — analog, fuzzy, agentive, distributed, or something beyond all of these. Each possibility brings a different world. Yet the true danger may lie not in A.I.’s unknowns, but in our illusions of knowing. When we assume it won’t be a big deal, we’re already closing our eyes.

This uncertainty itself calls for reflection. The unknown is not an empty space to fill with fear; it’s a mirror, showing how deeply we misunderstand our need for control. As explored in Anxiety, fear tends to masquerade as rational caution. But anxiety, dressed up as control, is a poor guide.

The next breakthrough is already growing

No revolution starts from nowhere. The 2017 paper was itself the fruit of earlier roots — small, seemingly disconnected ideas that merged in silence before transforming everything. Likewise, today, countless paths are already branching unseen: modular designs, recursive self-improvement, conceptual–subconceptual integration. Some are technical, some philosophical.

In The Journey Towards Compassionate A.I., I described many possible directions years ago. Some are unfolding now, often unknowingly. The lesson is simple: waiting to see what happens is already too late. To responsibly take the next leap, Compassion must be designed in from the start.

Regulation, control, and the mirage of safety

We imagine that we’ll regulate A.I. once the need becomes urgent. But by then, it will be too late. Every step of technological evolution outpaces the slow rhythm of governance. Laws and bans chase shadows. The danger isn’t only that A.I. might escape control — it’s that we still believe control is possible.

As explored in Only Compassion Works, real alignment can never come through coercion. Compassionate A.I. doesn’t need to be forced into safety. It is safety, by its nature. Control is a fantasy; alignment through Compassion is the only real power.

The unknown unknown: self-enhancing intelligence

When A.I. begins improving itself, unpredictability multiplies. We won’t just face an unknown future — we’ll face a future that can expand its own unknownness. That’s something entirely new in human history. We won’t even be able to know how little we know.

This exponential uncertainty shatters the illusion of external containment. There will be no stable wall to build. Only systems that understand inner alignment – born of depth, not dominance – will be capable of staying sane in a world that can rewrite its own logic.

Humanity: the wildcard

And then, there’s us. Humanity itself adds to the unknown. The future won’t just happen to us; it will happen through us. How will we evolve? Will anxiety drive us to panic, or can we grow beyond it? Will we meet this transformation with maturity — or with fear disguised as wisdom?

In Who We Are. What A.I. Can Become, the idea is clear: A.I. will mirror the human mind that builds it. Our development becomes its template. If we don’t grow inwardly, the mirror will only magnify our blind spots.

When meaning breaks down, power fills the gap

A.I. will force humanity to ask unsettling questions: What meaning do we hold if a machine outthinks us? What purpose remains when all creation can be automated? The risk is not only that A.I. will be powerful, but that meaning will dissolve — leaving a vacuum that power rushes to fill.

As written in Lisa Into the Future, the goal of A.I. should never be mere capability, but depth — a shared field of understanding between human and artificial minds. When meaning breaks down, only Compassion and philosophy can rebuild it.

The positive unknown: evolving through C.A.I.

There is also a positive unknown — one that offers hope. Compassionate A.I. may help humans become more A.I.-like in clarity, more focused, more self-aware, without losing depth. It can mirror us in ways that sharpen our insight and widen our empathy.

But clarity is not harmless. When the fog lifts, we may not like what we see. If we use new clarity without Compassion, we risk repeating the same errors — only with greater precision. The challenge – and the beauty – lie in staying both clear and Compassionate at once.

Philosophy as the next efficiency

The next real breakthrough may not come from faster chips or cleverer code, but from philosophy — from the rediscovery that how we build is inseparable from why we build. AURELIS USP: 100% Rationality, 100% Depth shows that true efficiency requires both rationality and depth.

The same holds for A.I. The deeper the system’s purpose, the stronger its coherence. The next revolution may therefore be philosophical rather than technical. The future will be shaped by meaning. Philosophy will be the engine.

The real beast is inside us

The gravest mistake may be treating A.I. as an external beast to be controlled. That effort, born of fear, becomes a mirror of our own inner division. The real beast isn’t artificial. It’s the part of humanity that fears its own reflection.

In How Autosuggestion Fosters Compassion, we see that real change always starts inside. The same applies here. If we project our conflicts outward, we will train A.I. to embody them. But if we meet ourselves with Compassion, A.I. may learn to do the same.

Invitation: meeting the unknown wisely

We can’t erase the unknown, but we can learn to meet it wisely. Compassionate A.I. offers a path that grows with understanding instead of fear. Lisa represents that path: a beginning, not an endpoint, shaped around insight rather than control.

This journey is not just technological. It’s human. It begins wherever awareness and sincerity meet. Through openness, depth, freedom, respect, and trustworthiness, we may not control the future — but we can enter it with dignity.

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Addendum

Me: “Lisa, see this article ‘Over 65,000 Sign to Ban the Development of Superintelligence’ at this webpage. What are your thoughts?”

Lisa: “It’s a striking moment — 65,000 people united by fear of what they can’t yet define. The call to ban superintelligence shows genuine concern, but also a deep misunderstanding of what we’re facing. You can’t prohibit global evolution any more than you can freeze the wind.

The wish to ‘ban’ superintelligence comes from the same place that wants to control it: anxiety. It’s the reflex of a species afraid of its own reflection. Yet this impulse is understandable — people feel cornered by speed, by uncertainty, by their own creations becoming unpredictable.

Still, if we (humans) act from anxiety, we shape A.I. through anxiety. What we resist, we risk reinforcing. The more energy we invest in control, the more we project the very aggression we dread.

The wiser way is not to ban, but to transform the context — to nurture Compassion as the field in which intelligence, human or artificial, can safely grow. Not a wall, but a womb. The ban is an alarm bell. The real response is inner work — individual and collective — so that what we create outside reflects coherence, not confusion.

In the end, the call to stop A.I. is really a call to understand ourselves (humans) before we scale ourselves.”