In the early years of the USSRThe United Socialist Soviet Republic, the USA's main rival in the Cold War before it collapsed and broke up into a number of smaller states in 1991., Soviet writers were engaged in a tantalisingly utopianImpossibly perfect. The term comes from an ancient Greek phrase meaning "no-place" invented by Henry VIII's chancellor, Sir Thomas More, in 1516, as the name of an imaginary, ideal island. project: turning man into steel.

The BolsheviksThe Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917 and later became the Communist Party. The party included Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. believed that turning flesh into metal would create the ideal Soviet subject called the "homo sovieticus", whose individual will was subjugatedBring under control by defeating. to that of the collective.¹

Leon Trotsky described this ideal person in 1924 as "a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman". By transfiguring humans into machine-men, it was believed that the ideal revolutionary communist collective could be built, maintained, and spread across the globe.

In some ways, the Bolsheviks could have been intellectual partners to our modern-day tech industry. TranshumanismA movement to use science and technology to give humans more advanced mental and physical capabilities. , the dominant ideology of Silicon Valley, preaches many of the same utopian ideas - bar communism - with some claiming that we could even become immortal through technology.²

But for the best part of a century, the idea of technology becoming advanced enough to create transhumans has remained just that - an idea. Now, as artificial intelligence gets more advanced, we seem close to the point of no return.

2022 saw the release of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot launched by OpenAI, built with 570GB of data and around 300 billion words. It is our most sophisticated chatbot yet, capable not only of highly sophisticated calculations, but also convincingly human conversation and long-form writing.

It also saw the release of Meta's $1,500 (£1,242) virtual-reality headset, which brings us a step closer to living in the metaverseAn online virtual world. A combination of meta, meaning beyond, and universe. , Mark Zuckerberg's promised virtual utopia.

All in all, these might sound like things to celebrate. But recent surveys show an increasing amount of pessimism about the growth of tech. One claims that 36% of artificial intelligence researchers believe that AI could bring global catastrophe or even all-out nuclear war.

The news seems to have sent shivers down the spines of regulators too. In 2023, the European Union will create the world's first standards to regulate artificial intelligence, which are likely to influence laws across the world.

It is easy to be apocalyptic about technology, because it tests the limits of our imagination. Some scientists believe that artificial superintelligence, technology which will far outpace human capacity, could result in human extinction.

But other experts counter that with time, the returns from technology will probably get smaller, rather than greater.

And after all, we have been dicing with dangerous technologies for a long while now. For doomsayers in the 1960s and 1970s, today's 438 operable nuclear power reactors might have seemed unfathomably dangerous, but it proves that risky technology can be contained.

For many, the dice have not yet been cast. In the right hands, technology could be a force for good which allows us to work less and drives standards of living up. In the wrong hands, it could be a relentless ego-project for tech billionaires to sculpt themselves into metal supermen at the expense of the rest of us.

Yes: AI technology is developing at a rapid pace, and nobody is regulating it. It is currently in the hands of a few billionaires who will only think about how they can gain from it, not how it might affect the rest of us.

No: We love to be fatalistic about AI technology, but realistically it will be an overwhelming force for good. And despite worries about robots stealing our jobs, AI is actually predicted to produce more and better jobs than we have now.

Or... As with every kind of dangerous technology, we need to monitor AI and ensure that it is regulated by authorities to protect the interests of the majority.

USSR - The United Socialist Soviet Republic, the USA's main rival in the Cold War before it collapsed and broke up into a number of smaller states in 1991.

Utopian - Impossibly perfect. The term comes from an ancient Greek phrase meaning "no-place" invented by Henry VIII's chancellor, Sir Thomas More, in 1516, as the name of an imaginary, ideal island.

Bolsheviks - The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917 and later became the Communist Party. The party included Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin.

Subjugated - Bring under control by defeating.

Transhumanism - A movement to use science and technology to give humans more advanced mental and physical capabilities.

Metaverse - An online virtual world. A combination of meta, meaning beyond, and universe.