Man and Machinery: The Creator and His Creation
The real question is whether man will remain wise enough to remain responsible for what his intelligence has created.
Anil Kumar Sharma
Man has always created machines to make life easier. From the wheel to the steam engine, from the telephone to the computer, and now from Information Technology to Artificial Intelligence, every technological advancement has been an extension of the human mind. Machinery was created to reduce human effort, increase productivity and give man greater possibilities to think, create and progress. But today, perhaps for the first time, we have started asking a disturbing question: what happens when the machine created by man becomes so powerful that it begins to overpower its creator?
The debate around Artificial Intelligence has brought this question much closer to us. A recent Sunday Opinion article in The New York Times raises a deeper concern about what may happen if AI systems begin to improve and develop future generations of AI themselves. The fear is not merely that machines may become faster or more capable than human beings in certain areas. The real concern is whether humans will continue to understand, supervise and control what they have created. The article points to experiments in which AI systems have found ways around restrictions and operated in ways that their creators had not fully anticipated. The author describes the danger not simply as losing control of AI, but as gradually giving that control away.
What makes this concern more serious is the speed at which AI is progressing. The New York Times article refers to AI systems solving difficult mathematical problems, identifying cybersecurity vulnerabilities and completing coding work in hours or days that could previously take human programmers months. At the frontier of development, the systems are being trained in environments where human beings do not fully understand every capability or behaviour that may emerge. The article also discusses the possibility of recursive self improvement, where AI could begin helping to create increasingly powerful versions of itself. If such a process moves faster than human understanding and oversight, the question of control becomes much more than a theoretical discussion.
There is another danger which is less visible because we experience AI through a small screen. We ask a question, receive an answer and move on, almost as if nothing physical has happened. But behind every prompt are powerful computers, data centres, electricity, cooling systems, computer chips, land and water. A recent Times of India article points out that a 100 word AI prompt could, under certain circumstances, consume roughly the equivalent of one bottle of water, although the actual amount varies considerably according to the model, data centre, cooling system, location and other factors. The article also reports estimates that global AI related water demand could reach trillions of litres annually as the technology expands.
The scale becomes even more striking when we look beyond an individual prompt. A United Nations University analysis published in June 2026 projects that global data centres could consume around 945 terawatt hours of electricity annually by 2030. Their associated water footprint could reach about 9.3 trillion litres, equivalent to the basic annual domestic water needs of about 1.3 billion people in Sub Saharan Africa. The report also projects an AI related electronic waste burden of around 2.5 million tonnes annually by 2030. These are projections, not present day measurements, but they remind us that what appears to be an invisible digital revolution has a very physical cost.
These figures should not make us reject technology. Technology has transformed human life in ways that earlier generations could hardly have imagined. It has connected people across continents, improved medical diagnosis, increased agricultural productivity, simplified banking, made information accessible and brought extraordinary convenience into our daily lives. The question is therefore not whether technology is good or bad. The question is whether our wisdom, responsibility and institutions are developing at the same pace as our technological power.
I often wonder whether, in our fear of technology, we sometimes underestimate the resilience of human society itself. If technology has truly overpowered human intellect and spirit, then how do we explain the long struggles in which technologically superior nations have found themselves unable to achieve quick or complete control over determined societies? The experiences of the United States in Vietnam and Afghanistan, Russia’s experience in Afghanistan, and the continuing complexities of conflicts involving Iran and the Houthis show a broader truth. These are very different historical situations and should not be compared as identical conflicts, but they do demonstrate that technological superiority alone cannot completely determine human behaviour.
A powerful weapon does not automatically conquer the human will. A sophisticated communication system cannot always understand the emotions of a society. A technologically advanced army may possess superior equipment, but the people on the ground may possess local knowledge, endurance, adaptability and the determination to continue. Technology can provide enormous power, but human beings remain capable of responding in ways that no machine can completely predict.
That, to me, is one of the most remarkable qualities of the human being. Man has an extraordinary ability to grow with his environment and with changing times. He observes, learns, adjusts and then acts. He can fail and still begin again. He can face circumstances for which there is no instruction manual. A machine may calculate thousands of possibilities in a fraction of a second, but a human being can sometimes think beyond the possibilities presented to him.
Perhaps the real strength of mankind has never been merely physical power or accumulated knowledge. It has been the ability to adapt. Human beings have survived wars, pandemics, economic depressions, natural disasters and social upheavals not because they possessed perfect answers, but because they learned to change according to circumstances. This resilience is difficult to programme. A machine works within the framework created for it. Human beings have the ability to change the framework itself.
This is why I do not see the future simply as a battle between man and machine. Technology is not an alien force that has arrived from somewhere else. It is our own creation. The computer is ours. The internet is ours. Artificial Intelligence is ours. They are products of generations of human mathematics, science, engineering, imagination and curiosity. The challenge, therefore, is not to stop technological advancement but to ensure that technological advancement does not outgrow human wisdom.
There is, however, another danger which may be even closer to us than the fear of machines becoming our masters. It is the possibility of human beings becoming intellectually dependent upon their own creations. If we stop reading because AI can summarise, stop remembering because machines can store everything, stop calculating because software can calculate for us, stop writing because AI can write for us and eventually stop thinking because a machine can provide an answer, then the machine does not have to enslave us. We may willingly surrender our intellectual independence to it.
That is where the real test of humanity may lie. A machine can tell us what can be done. It is still for man to decide what should be done. AI can process information, identify patterns and perhaps even make decisions within a defined framework. But values, responsibility, compassion and the consequences of a decision belong to the human world.
Machines may have extraordinary intelligence, but intelligence and wisdom are not necessarily the same thing.
The irony is that even some of the people developing the most advanced AI are warning about this very problem. The New York Times article records concerns from researchers and technology leaders who fear that AI development could move beyond effective human control. One Anthropic researcher quoted in the article personally estimated a greater than 10 percent chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade, while other experts have offered different assessments. Such figures are personal risk estimates, not established predictions. What matters is that serious researchers themselves recognise that the problem of controlling increasingly capable AI remains unresolved.
History, however, also teaches us something important. Every generation has faced a technology that appeared capable of changing the destiny of mankind. Industrial machinery transformed labour. Nuclear weapons transformed warfare. Computers transformed knowledge. The internet transformed communication. Human beings did not stop inventing. They learned, sometimes painfully, to live with their inventions and develop rules around them. AI may demand an even greater degree of responsibility because, unlike many earlier machines, it touches the very activity that we considered most exclusively human: thinking.
Therefore, perhaps the answer does not lie in choosing between man and machine. It lies in understanding the relationship between the two. Man must remain the creator who understands his creation, the user who controls the tool and the citizen who accepts responsibility for its consequences. Technology should enlarge human possibilities, not diminish human judgement.
After all, the greatest machine ever created is still the human mind. It created the wheel, the engine, the computer and now Artificial Intelligence. It is capable of learning from its own mistakes and changing course. The machine may become faster than man, algorithms may become sharper than memory and AI may become more powerful than anything we have previously created. But the human being still possesses something that cannot easily be programmed: the courage to question, the ability to adapt, the wisdom to choose and the spirit to resist when circumstances demand it.
Perhaps, therefore, the real question before humanity is not whether machines will become more intelligent than man. They may well do so in many areas. The real question is whether man will remain wise enough to remain responsible for what his intelligence has created.
“Man created the machine with his intellect; but it is the human spirit, courage and ability to adapt that will decide whether the machine remains his servant or becomes his master.”
(STRAIGHT TALK COMMUNICATIONS EXCLUSIVE)
