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Asian Americans can be blunt about Henry Kissinger. He carpet-bombed Cambodia. He napalmed the hell out of Vietnam, a war that he should be pilloried for extending rather than praised for ending. But in a depraved war mongering world, it got him a Nobel Peace Prize. AAPIs who survived Kissinger’s dastardly deeds were able to seek refuge in America, the consolation for having our homelands bombed and destroyed. That’s the positive spin on the man who warranted an obit with the headline, “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies.” (Rolling Stone).

What I find more astonishing about Kissinger’s life is how at 100, he wasn’t done. Not only was he looking for relevance by traveling to China to be courted by China’s president Xi Jinping (Kissinger was behind Nixon’s opening up of China in the ‘70s), but NBC news also reported how Kissinger was actively writing and speaking about artificial intelligence (A.I.).

Of course, the man who knew a thing or two about doomsday scenarios would be fascinated by the thought of a machine being more diabolical than any human. Perhaps he was envious of the possibility of a robot creating more global mayhem than he ever could and wanted in on it. He was, after all, the real deal, a monstrous human.

Alas, he was still just human, and even the worst of us die.

But A.I. lives on as do the prospects of true existential dread.

And that’s the topic this time out.

THE PATH HAS BEEN CHOSEN FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Last week, as Robert Frost might have said about the world of A.I., two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and the key developers took the riskiest choice. The green lights are on for A.I.

There’s been much reportage on this, but maybe you missed it.Given wars that could become world wars, local concerns about law and order, garden variety racism and discrimination, impending holiday travel and the like, you probably didn’t pay that much attention to a tech billionaire named Sam Altman getting fired last week by his company’s board of directors.

Or how the story snowballed. The fired Altman was suddenly hired by another major competitor, which caused headaches for the firing company as workers threatened a revolt, and outsiders speculated as to the impact of the fall of a major tech company on the Bay Area.

The firing company, OpenAI, did what any capitalist enterprise worth its billions would do. It dumped the board members that wanted Altman out, reconstituted a new board of yes-folks, rehired the fired billionaire, and all is back to normal.

We are back on a collision course with our own humanity.

OpenAI is the leading company in artificial intelligence. It essentially creates computers that are now or will be smarter than we are. Altman was a full-speed ahead” guy who wanted to transform the world, creating machines that are so smart, the world could be a better place.

Think about going to your doctor, who may know some things but not all. He makes mistakes and can forget your name. But with A.I. capability he puts information about your symptoms in a computer so smart, your diagnosis comes out in seconds. You are cured, hooray, A.I.

Consider this result in everything in life; a machine or a robot so smart it has answers to anything beyond words. It can see the sewing patterns in a garment. It can produce an image or likeness on video that replicates a real person. (Is it Simu Liu? Or Fake A.I. Simu?) This is the new world of A.I. where machines come up with the answer that replaces humans--if not your life, then your livelihood. That means you and your job. The actors union was concerned about this during its strike. It won more money. But the union couldn’t stop the technology.

So that’s A.I. in a nutshell. It’s the ultimate in tech disruption. Computers and robots, becoming smarter than any human.

But that means, just as there’s room for good, there is equal opportunity for the opposite—evil.

What if artificial intelligence can be so good, it can do whatever the bad guys are capable of doing? This is not sci-fi. Unregulated, a machine can be so smart it can bypass humans and make the wrong moral choice.

And that’s it for mankind.

We aren’t there yet, but we were at a crossroads last week. And the choice was made.

Altman was rehired by OpenAI to let the technology spread and enrich all those who can control it.

The more reserved, go-slow types lost like OpenAI’s chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, Helen Toner, a director of strategy at Georgetown University’s Cetner for Security and Emerging Technology, and Tasha McCauley, a researcher at the Rand Corporation, were let go like Windows 7 or outdated Palm Pilots.

They were replaced by hand-picked tech “yes people,” and a big name, Lawrence H. Summers, an economist, former Harvard University President, and former Treasury Secretary in the Obama years.

Notice they didn’t name an American Filipino writer who is an early adopter, but still cautious. Nor did I see any BIPOC folks on the board.

OpenAI named its own gatekeepers to do whatever it wants in the name of capitalism. And you know how well that strategy has worked out if you’re in the 99 percent.

Someone needs to regulate this and put a signpost that sets the speed limit at 65 mph or something. At this point, there are no guardrails or radar guns to ticket the tech folks.Congress? At every hearing Congress doesn’t even appear smart enough to regulate TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or X.

This is how we’re going into this new world. Pay attention or get left out and replaced by a machine. There are already predictions of when technologists will reach “singularity,” or the time when machines can no longer be monitored by humans.

Estimates have been put at 5 to 50 years before “singularity.” But some say sooner.

Just yesterday, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, the chip maker that is one of A.I.’s biggest enablers, said it will be 10 years before computers achieve “artificial general intelligence.” That’s the point where computers can pretty much break down multi-step tasks like humans do.

Speaking at a New York Times/Deal Book Summit (yes, the same one where Elon Musk told advertisers to "Go F*** Yourself,") Huang joked that he likes how the A.I. biz puts him in a state where he or the world might "perish.”

That day may be closer than we think. Reports last week said the firing and rehiring of Altman was due to disagreements over a breakthrough. A secret algorithm called Q-star solved some grade school math problems that indicated the machine’s growing ability to use logic in a way that could replace humans.

With that ability, A.I. could lead to the displacement of up to 47 percent of jobs by 2034.

Forget global warming. Consider computers heating up and replacing mankind.

We’re not just talking about a digital divide, where some people have fast wi-fi connections and others do not. We are talking about digital elimination, a true existential dilemma.

That’s why you need to pay attention to A.I. developments and make sure that people of color are on boards that help regulate whatever the tech folks devise as benign scientific breakthroughs.

They are not benign. A.I. can transform the world but are we—you and me–part of it?

But OpenAI works in secret, just like Kissinger did in his diplomatic missions. No wonder Kissinger at 100 was fascinated by A.I. But now he’s dead, and the artificial monster and the dread it can create lives on.

As I said, I’m no Luddite.

I’ve even asked OpenAI’s Chat GPT to write an introduction for myself that I would give to someone to bring me on stage.

It was astonishing, calling me “a celebrated journalist” whose “groundbreaking work” has “not only earned him accolades but sparked important conversations about race, identity and social justice.”

And those are the non-blushable parts.

Frankly, I couldn’t have written it better. But it lacked humility and humanity.

That is what’s at stake if we lose to A.I.

THIS SATURDAY—THE PEN OAKLAND AWARDS

For the humans in the crowd, I am emceeing the 34th Annual PEN Oakland Awards on Saturday at 2pm at the Oakland Public Library, Rockridge Branch, 5366 College Ave., Oakland, Calif.

Winners will be announced for the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, in recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community. Other awards include the Adelle Foley Award, the Reginald Martin Award for Excellence in Criticism, and the Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award.

The event is free and open to the public.

All writing created by other humans.

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NOTE: Watch “Emil Amok’s Takeout,” as Emil Guillermo reviews Kissinger's record (at approx. 7:00), including his egregious actions in Bangladesh. Also Prof. Dan Gonzales expands on Kissinger and joins in discussing the other news of the week, George Santos, Sandra Day O'Connor, and the Newsom/DeSantis debate. https://www.youtube.com/live/DzWpq9zaeuU?si=fLNCzG2mDJFJqyOS