Global Dialogues

The Promethean passions binding modern humanity—the desire for unbridled power and mastery of the natural world—are colliding with political and environmental constraints. As we enter the artificial intelligence era, is there actually a greater wisdom in spurning the lofty visions of technological utopias and acknowledging the tragic frailty and precarity of earthly existence?

In 2024, I created the concept logo for the AI Uprising Hiwaraat conference at Georgetown University in Qatar. While designing, I contemplated how artificial intelligence would reshape our world. The theme of the conference was AI in the workspace and the environment. The prevailing narrative in my mind was utopian, which meant that AI would solve our greatest challenges, from climate change to healthcare accessibility. Yet in the middle of this techno-optimism, I wondered if we were ignoring essential questions about human fragility and the limitations of technological progress.

The Promethean desire to transcend our limitations drives our technological pursuits. Like the mythological figure who stole fire from the gods, we seek to harness artificial intelligence and technology to elevate beyond natural constraints. However, these aspirations increasingly collide with political and environmental realities that reveal the precarity of our existence.

Consider the environmental crisis. Despite technological advances promising sustainable solutions, we confront diminishing biodiversity, rising temperatures, and resource depletion, all of which are consequences of our so-called "mastery over nature." The industrial revolution across the global North has become a huge contributing factor for climate change in the global South today, as I discovered during my first semester research at university.

The social media landscape offers another sobering example. Platforms initially designed to connect humanity have instead fostered division, misinformation, and political polarization. In Pakistan, where I've observed the effects firsthand, hate speech and political propaganda have inflicted deep democratic wounds on the nation, illustrating how technological "solutions" often create unforeseen problems that challenge utopian narratives.

The global South bears the disproportionate consequences of these technological pursuits while remaining largely excluded from shaping their development. As scholars like Kohei Saito have argued, including in forums such as the Georgetown Global Dialogues, the pursuit of unrestrained technological and economic growth without regard for ecological limits exacerbates global inequalities and accelerates environmental degradation.

Acknowledging human frailty doesn't mean abandoning technological innovation but rather reframing our relationship with it. Instead of seeking transcendence through technology, we might embrace what philosopher Martha Nussbaum calls "the fragility of goodness," recognizing that our vulnerability and interdependence are not weaknesses to overcome, but foundations for building global solidarity.

This perspective offers a more honest engagement with technology, particularly artificial intelligence. Rather than viewing AI as our salvation, we might see it as a tool that, like all human creations, bears the imprint of our limitations, biases, and shortsightedness. By acknowledging these constraints, we can develop technologies that serve humanity's needs without promising impossible utopias.

My work in Georgetown's Innovation Lab as well as the multiple courses I have taken have all convinced me that technological progress is most meaningful when it acknowledges human finitude rather than attempting to transcend it. So can we resist the appeal of technological utopias? We must. True wisdom lies not in pursuing technological transcendence but in embracing our shared vulnerability as the basis for more sustainable technological development, one that serves human flourishing within the constraints of our fragile planet.

Hassan Amin (SFS'27) is a junior at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Qatar.