AI - A Modern-Day Leviathan?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly described as a modern, technological "Leviathan"—a supreme, centralized authority managing security, surveillance, and societal order, much like the sovereign entity - Leviathan - described by Thomas Hobbes in 1651. As algorithmic systems, rather than people, take on roles like governing, predicting, and automating, they are likely to reshape global power structures. 

• Technological Sovereign: Similar to Hobbes’s concept, AI acts as a "digital sovereign" to which society grants power (through data and usage) in exchange for order, efficiency, and safety.
• "Algorithmic Leviathan": This term highlights AI's role in governing via code, data, and infrastructure, bypassing traditional political, legal, and bureaucratic institutions.
• Surveillance and Control: AI systems, such as advanced cameras and predictive analytics, enable a new form of surveillance that regulates behaviour and ensures security, much like a 17th-century sovereign ensuring order.
• Shifting Power: The rise of AI as a Leviathan signals a transition where authority moves from nation-states to private tech conglomerates. 

While this "AI Leviathan" offers immense efficiency, it brings challenges concerning privacy, bias, and accountability. Whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an "uncontrolled leviathan"—a massive, uncontrollable entity—is a subject of intense debate among experts, with growing concerns that AI is rapidly evolving beyond human control. While some researchers and industry leaders argue that this potential for a "superintelligent" system to become uncontrollable is a real, existential threat, others argue that the term is alarmist and that the real danger lies with the humans controlling the development of AI. 

Increased Insecurity and Uncertainty

AI presents a dual-use paradox, significantly increasing risks to global security and uncertainty while simultaneously offering major potential benefits. It enhances cybersecurity threats, deepfake misinformation, and autonomous weapon risks, while fuelling societal anxiety over data privacy, job displacement, and opaque, biased decision-making. 

Impact on Security

•  Cyber and Physical Threats: AI empowers more sophisticated and frequent cyberattacks, threatening critical infrastructure, while autonomous systems could lead to unpredictable, rapid escalation of conflicts. Cyber and physical threats are increasingly merging into combined, hybrid attacks, often referred to as cyber-physical systems (CPS) risks, where digital breaches cause tangible, real-world damage. These threats target integrated infrastructure, such as manipulating industrial control systems (ICS), disabling security cameras, or using compromised IoT devices to breach networks. 
•  Weaponisation: AI can be used to develop novel chemical weapons or enable autonomous weapon systems, raising fears of catastrophic outcomes.
• Surveillance and Control: AI increases the ability of regimes to implement pervasive surveillance, eroding civil liberties.
• Risks of over -reliance: Over-automation reduces human vigilance, leaving systems vulnerable to novel attacks that AI fails to detect. 

Impact on Uncertainty

• Distrust and Disinformation: The inability to distinguish between synthetic and real content (deepfakes) erodes trust in media and democratic institutions.
• Ethical/Legal Ambiguity: AI bias in hiring, policing, and credit, along with "black-box" decision-making, creates uncertainty about fairness and accountability. ["Black-box" decision-making refers to systems, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, where inputs are processed to produce outputs without disclosing or allowing humans to understand the internal logic, algorithms, or reasoning behind the results. While these systems are capable of high performance and accuracy in complex tasks, their opacity makes them difficult to audit, debug, or trust]. 
• Unpredictability of the Future: The rapid evolution of AI makes it difficult for regulators and society to predict long-term impacts, leading to a "flash war" or "flash crash" scenario of rapid escalation. 

Mitigation and Future Outlook

• Human-AI Symbiosis: Experts suggest that combining AI capabilities with human judgment—"Authentic Intelligence"—is crucial for managing risks and reducing uncertainty. [Authentic Intelligence (AQ) refers to the unique, innate human capacity for emotional intelligence, empathy, creativity, and ethical judgment, which complements artificial intelligence (AI). Unlike AI, which analyzes data patterns, AQ focuses on lived experience, moral reasoning, and genuine human connection to drive innovation and understanding. Key aspects of Authentic Intelligence include:

Ø Human-Centric Skills: Emphasizes qualities such as curiosity, perspective, and moral choice.

Ø Relationship Management: Focuses on building, nurturing, and managing human relationships, which cannot be automated.

Ø Complementing AI: Rather than replacing AI, authentic intelligence serves as a guiding force to ensure AI is used ethically and effectively, often termed a "symbiotic relationship".

Ø Contextual Understanding: Involves interpreting situations based on experience, context, and emotion rather than just probabilistic data. 

Ø Why Authentic Intelligence Matters Now
As AI becomes more prevalent, the demand for "human-centric" skills increases. The World Economic Forum highlights that authentic intelligence is essential to harness AI for growth while maintaining human values. In business, it helps bridge team alignment, ensuring technology acts as an amplifier rather than a replacement for human judgment]. 

• Regulation:  Active regulation is needed to address the security risks posed by autonomous systems and to establish accountability in decision-making.
• Proactive Security: While AI is a tool for attackers, it is also necessary for building robust, automated defenses to keep up with the speed of modern threats. 

Conclusion:

The perception of AI as an uncontrolled leviathan is driven by its unpredictable, fast-moving development and the difficulty of aligning it with human ethics. While many experts, such as Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, consider this a serious threat, others emphasize that it is not inevitable and depends heavily on how AI is developed, regulated, and managed. While some view these fears as "neophobia" or irrational alarmism, the consensus among many researchers is that the potential for AI to become an uncontrollable force is real enough to require immediate, global safety standards.