Expert Warns Against Geopolitics, Delusions Built Around Artificial Intelligence

Emma Okonji As technologies continue to emerge globally, theories of delusions continue to spread around some of the emerging technologies, especially the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that is fast shaping the world. Worried about what has been widely described as the big AI hoax and the delusions of geopolitics surrounding AI, a technology expert, Dr. Mkpe Abang has warned against some of the theories surrounding AI, insisting they are simply hoax and delusions that must be discarded by all. Citing the highly canvassed message of apocalyptic occurrences in year 2000, where many people were told of a possible crashing of computer systems, the collapse of the internet, and of cataclysmic halt to data transmissions; even, of an attendant financial meltdown, Abang said such was the beginning of delusions surrounding emerging technologies. He questioned: “Did any of such happened throughout the month of January 2000, the first month of the beginning of the millennium? The sad reality is that several companies, individuals, agencies and even governments deployed the fear-factor, the phobia so induced, to fleece and defraud millions of people globally of their hard-earned monies through the fearmongering so spread. But, does the world ever learn?” According to him, today, governments all over the world are summoning experts, while profit-focused corporations are issuing warnings with muted expectations abut AI. He however said such summons and warnings about AI are all hoax, even though AI itself is not a hoax. “Let me dispose immediately of a possible misunderstanding. Artificial Intelligence is not a hoax. Its capabilities are real, its advances extraordinary and some of its risks serious. The hoax is something else: the mythology being constructed around AI – the proposition that humanity has suddenly encountered a technological phenomenon without historical antecedent. That machines have somehow acquired an independent moral agency; that mass human redundancy is inevitable; that today’s AI represents the summit of technological evolution; and that every apocalyptic possibility deserves to be treated as impending reality,” Abang said. According to him, one of the AI promoters, Anthropic, announced it would invest $32 billion to build a data centre in Queensland, Australia. AI leading companies, Open AI, and the likes, are teaming up to propose how to put the brakes on advancement of AI beyond human control. “So, this is what they tell the gullible world, and if this is not laughable, then the world must have reached the end of thinking already. For-profit organisations are suddenly so caring that they are the ones proposing how to curb their own profit-hungry tendencies? Think,” Abang further said. There is no doubt that Artificial Intelligence is real. Its capabilities are impressive and, in some areas, genuinely transformative. Actually, the risks ascribed to AI deserve serious attention. But the frenzy surrounding AI increasingly risks obscuring a simpler historical truth: AI did not fall from the sky. It is technology – and technology has always advanced by extending the capabilities of human beings while disrupting the arrangements built around yesterday’s tools, Abang added. “The question, therefore, is not whether AI matters. Because, yes, AI plainly does matter. The question is whether the apocalyptic mythology now surrounding AI bears reasonable resemblance in proportion to what AI actually is – and whether the rest of the world, particularly Africa, should uncritically consume a narrative being generated largely by the same technological, corporate and geopolitical centres competing to dominate the technology itself. That is where my scepticism begins,” Abang insisted, adding that AI itself is older than the panic surrounding it. Speaking about the contemporary AI narrative, he said: “We have converted an evolutionary technological process into a revolutionary mythology. Humans love so much to create ‘a mountain out of a molehill’ as it is generally said, for no justifiable reason – just to make something so easily explainable so complex that a whole course is set up in order to explain it. Addressing the issue of innovation, from computer automated calculation and information processing, to internet connectivity, and the use of smartphones, which eventually placed computing, photography, navigation, publishing, banking and global communication inside human palms and pockets, as well as the emergence of cloud computing and machine learning, Abang questioned why on earth people should think that technological history has reached some metaphysical discontinuity with the advent of AI. In the area of job creation, Abang said emerging technologies like AI, made some jobs obsolete and destroyed most business models by crating digital jobs to replace analogue jobs. “Industrial machinery transformed artisanal production. Computers eliminated entire categories of clerical work. Automated teller machines changed banking – for good. Digital photography devastated film processing. The internet destroyed some business models while creating industries that previously did not exist. The important point is not that technology never destroys jobs. Perhaps it does. But the technology has created more digital jobs than the analogue jobs it displaced. The International Labour Organisation’s 2025 global assessment found that one in four workers is employed in an occupation with some exposure to generative AI. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) workplace studies have similarly found job reorganisation to be more prevalent than displacement in examined cases, with automation frequently moving human workers towards tasks in which they retain comparative advantages. So, do not let any scaremongers sell you any doomsday predictions about AI, because the world has seen similar disruptions; the world will still see more stupendous disruptions after the AI buzz ebbs in decades to come,” Abang further said.