We’ve been here with technology offering paradise since at least the 1960s. The failure continues to be a lack of thinking. And not thinking in the conventional sense.

Buckminster Fuller expressed the idea that humanity already possesses the technological capability to provide everyone on Earth with a standard of living far higher than anyone had previously imagined — but that it was being blocked by outdated political and economic systems.

This sentiment is most famously captured in his 1969 book “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.” In it, he wrote:

“It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.”

This quote reflects his belief that the world’s technological capabilities had reached a point where scarcity was no longer a technical problem but a distributional and systemic one.

Fuller developed this theme throughout the 1960s and 1970s, repeating it in numerous lectures and writings, including “Critical Path” (1981), where he further argued that humanity was at a crossroads between utopia enabled by technology and continued suffering under obsolete systems.

Put bluntly, our unrecognized default for self survival that runs the show is being empowered to our self destruction.

The central theme of the 1956 classic Si-Fi Forbidden Planet, where a super-advanced civilization (the Krell) destroys itself by unwittingly unleashing its own subconscious primal urges through its technology, is an extraordinarily potent and relevant metaphor for the risks we face today with AI which I prefer to call Machine Assisted Work or Writing (MAW) to keep some hubris at bay.

In Forbidden Planet the Krell built a machine of unimaginable power, designed to materialize thought itself — but were ultimately destroyed because it also materialized their unconscious, primitive, destructive impulses, which they themselves did not fully understand or control.

This is directly analogous to the alignment problem in AI today:

• As we build systems with increasing power, capable of acting on goals, generating solutions, and modifying their own processes, the danger is that they might pursue outcomes that reflect misaligned, poorly specified, or unintended aspects of human input.

• Just as the Krell were destroyed by the monsters of their own ids, humans today risk unleashing AI systems that pursue goals in ways that are harmful — not because the AI is malicious, but because it rigidly or creatively executes on poorly framed objectives.

Deeper Psychological Reflection:

• The Krell’s tragedy wasn’t just technological. It was psychological and philosophical: they failed to understand their own nature — the shadow side of intelligence and consciousness.

• Likewise, AI development today risks amplifying not just intelligence but also the flaws, biases, and unexamined drives of its creators, whether that’s greed, dominance, exploitation, or simple negligence.

Modern Echoes:

• Discussions around AI safety, existential risk (by thinkers like Eliezer Yudkowsky, Stuart Russell, and others), and even current harms (like AI-driven disinformation, surveillance, and algorithmic bias) are modern manifestations of this core theme.

• Tech companies racing ahead without fully understanding the consequences mirrors the hubris of the Krell — the belief that intelligence alone, without wisdom or ethical grounding, is sufficient.

In Short:

Forbidden Planet is a prescient and haunting allegory for the risks of AI today — a story about the dangers of creating powerful tools without fully understanding ourselves or embedding adequate safeguards. It’s a cautionary tale not only about technology but about the shadow side of the human psyche itself.

And it’s worse than that!

With a further prompting the MAW came out with this:

The theme of humanity unleashing destructive forces through its own ingenuity—without fully understanding or mastering itself—goes back thousands of years. It’s one of the oldest cautionary narratives in human culture, recurring across myth, religion, philosophy, and literature long before Forbidden Planet or even modern technology.

🔥 Deep Historical Roots of the Theme

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⚡ Ancient Myths and Religious Narratives:

• The Garden of Eden (Genesis) — Humanity gains knowledge (the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil) but is expelled from paradise for overstepping boundaries meant for the divine. Knowledge and power come with irreversible consequences.

• Pandora’s Box (Greek mythology) — The gods give Pandora a box (or jar) and warn her not to open it. Her curiosity releases all the evils into the world, leaving only hope behind. A clear metaphor for unintended consequences of human curiosity and overreach.

• The Tower of Babel (Genesis) — Humans, in their pride, attempt to build a tower to the heavens to make themselves like gods. The result is confusion, division, and the scattering of peoples — a punishment for technological hubris and ambition without wisdom.

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⚙️ Philosophical and Classical Warnings:

• The Icarus Myth (Greek mythology) — Daedalus builds wings for himself and his son Icarus. Despite warnings, Icarus flies too close to the sun, melting the wax and falling to his death. A timeless warning against hubris, overreach, and ignoring limits.

• Prometheus (Greek mythology) — Stole fire (symbolic of technology, knowledge, and creative power) from the gods and gave it to humanity. He was punished for eternity — a story that mixes the blessing and danger of technological power.

• Socrates (via Plato) — In Phaedrus, Socrates critiques writing itself (a form of technology) as something that will lead to forgetfulness, a surface appearance of wisdom rather than real understanding.

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⚔️ Modern Precursors to AI Warning Themes:

• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) — Often cited as the first modern science fiction story, it’s a tale of a scientist who creates life and loses control of it. It’s explicitly a meditation on the dangers of playing god without foresight or responsibility.

• Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots, 1920) — The origin of the word “robot.” Robots designed to serve humanity eventually rebel and destroy their creators — an early AI rebellion story.

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🧠 The Psychological Layer:

Carl Jung and other depth psychologists argue that when humans ignore or suppress the “shadow” aspects of the psyche — aggression, fear, domination, greed — those forces eventually surface destructively. This is exactly the Forbidden Planet story writ large: technological amplification of the unexamined human shadow.

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🚨 The Recurring Archetype:

Across cultures and eras, the pattern is the same:

1. Humans unlock powerful tools or knowledge.

2. They do so without fully understanding themselves or the consequences.

3. The technology externalizes inner flaws, limitations, or shadows.

4. A crisis, collapse, or catastrophe follows.

This is not just a science fiction trope — it’s a core human archetype, baked into our mythopoetic DNA.

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✍️ In Summary:

Forbidden Planet didn’t invent this theme — it inherited it. The Krell are modern heirs to Icarus, Prometheus, and Babel. Today, AI is the next iteration of this ancient, unresolved tension between power, wisdom, and the shadow side of human creativity.