The Unstoppable March of Technology: Game Theory and AI

In 2011, scientists deliberately modified H5N1 bird flu to make it airborne in mammals, knowing it could kill half the people it infected if it ever leaked. The logic was simple: if we don’t do it, our enemies will. This is known as game theory, and it’s exactly why AI will continue to be developed, no matter how many people beg us to stop.

Game theory isn’t really a theory at all. It’s the brutal math of survival. If your rival is building a weapon that could destroy you, the safest move isn’t to stop, it’s to build the same weapon, just faster, even if it puts everyone at risk. That’s why the US and the Soviets stockpiled 60,000 nuclear warheads, enough to wipe out life on Earth ten times over. Both sides knew it could end civilization, but neither could afford to slow down.

Game theory is the iron law of human nature: if a technology promises an advantage, it will be built, no matter how deadly or suicidal in the long run. This is known as the prisoner’s dilemma, and it’s the exact position the US and China are in with AI today. That’s why, no matter what, AI development will charge full steam ahead.

The prisoner’s dilemma works like this: two suspects are locked in separate rooms. If both stay silent, they each get a light sentence. If one betrays the other while the second stays silent, the betrayer goes free, and the loyal one rots in prison. If both betray, they both lose. The rational choice isn’t silence, it’s betrayal every time, because neither can trust the other to hold the line. The consequences are too great.

This is the United States and China with AI. Imagine if superintelligence is possible. If America pauses but China doesn’t, China wins. If China pauses but America doesn’t, America wins. But if they both keep building, the world hurtles toward a future where humans may become completely irrelevant or worse.

Let me tell you about the Thirty Years’ War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in European history, sparked by the printing press. When Gutenberg’s invention spread across Europe, it didn’t just democratize knowledge, it locked religious differences onto the page. Suddenly, small theological disputes that might once have stayed local, questions about the Eucharist, papal authority, or the exact path to salvation, were copied, printed, and spread across nations in black and white. Once those differences were concrete, they became non-negotiable.

From 1618 to 1648, Catholics and Protestants butchered each other in the heart of Europe. Entire cities were reduced to ash, crops burned in the fields, and starvation and plague swept the continent. Armies looted, raped, and slaughtered their way across Germany, Bohemia, France, and beyond. The numbers are staggering: in some regions of the German states, as much as 20% of the population was wiped out. Millions of lives were lost, not to conquest or empire, but to arguments over which interpretation of scripture was correct.

That’s what the printing press did. It gave people the power to see their differences in ink, and then it gave them the will to kill each other over them. Entire nations bled themselves dry over tiny theological disputes made visible by a single new technology: the ability to mass-produce text. It ripped Europe apart.

This pattern hasn’t gone away. In Nigeria today, Christians and Muslims are still killing each other in bloody clashes, not over land, but over belief. Some 300,000 Christians have been killed in Africa over the last 20 years.

Now, zoom out and imagine what happens when AI forces the ultimate question of belief: should humans merge with machines, or should we reject them? The answer is likely to get bloody. If we slaughtered each other over scripture, imagine what we’ll do when we’re fighting over the definition of humanity itself.

If you’re worried about AI, you’re not alone. You’re right to be concerned. But stopping there is like standing in the middle of a busy freeway, you’ll get hit from both sides. You’ll face the real downsides of AI, but you’ll also miss the opportunities it offers.