“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.”
— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
(BALTIMORE – July 14, 2026) – Our generation’s mission may not be simply to invent artificial intelligence. It may be to govern it wisely. The question is no longer whether AI will transform civilization. It already has. The question is whether we possess the wisdom to ensure that the infrastructure powering it strengthens humanity rather than diminishes it.
I recently watched The Great Wall.
Like any Hollywood movie, it takes liberties with history. But one idea stayed with me long after the credits rolled.
In the film, the greatest treasure isn’t gold.
It isn’t land.
It isn’t even the Great Wall itself.
It’s gunpowder.
The elders understand something the younger warriors do not. They fear that if gunpowder leaves China, it will change the world forever. The struggle is not simply over a weapon. It is over whether humanity is ready for a technology powerful enough to alter civilization itself.
Whether or not the movie accurately portrays that moment in history is almost beside the point.
History tells us that gunpowder did change the world.
It reshaped warfare.
It transformed kingdoms.
It shifted the balance of global power.
It made some nations dominant while rendering old ways of life obsolete.
Every civilization-changing technology seems to arrive carrying both promise and peril.
The printing press democratized knowledge while spreading propaganda.
The steam engine fueled prosperity while accelerating industrial pollution.
The automobile expanded freedom while reshaping cities, consuming fossil fuels, and changing the Earth’s climate.
Nuclear energy promised virtually limitless power while introducing humanity to the terrifying possibility of mutually assured destruction.
Now comes artificial intelligence.
Like those inventions before it, AI is neither inherently good nor inherently evil.
It is a tool.
But tools become infrastructure.
And infrastructure reshapes civilization.
That is why the conversation about artificial intelligence cannot stop with software.
It must include the physical world.
The electricity.
The water.
The land.
The transmission lines.
The data centers.
The communities asked to host them.
The workers who build them.
The consumers who ultimately pay for them.
The world has already learned one lesson from nuclear technology.
Some innovations are so powerful that they demand international cooperation, transparency, and thoughtful governance.
Perhaps artificial intelligence belongs in that category.
Not because AI itself is evil.
But because its consequences may prove too significant for any one company, one state, or even one nation to manage alone.
That is why I increasingly believe organizations like the United Nations should treat AI infrastructure as more than an economic opportunity.
It is becoming a planetary question.
How do we harness one of humanity’s greatest inventions without allowing its physical demands to overwhelm the very planet it is intended to serve?
That may become one of the defining questions of the twenty-first century.
