The Tribune

By DIANE PHILLIPS

WE ARE all afraid.

We are afraid of the small stuff, saying the wrong thing to someone we are trying to impress or the wrinkle we pretend is a crease from smiling.

We are afraid of the big stuff, the sound of the doctor’s voice as she confirms our worst fear and offers the promise of “if things go well, you will survive the chemo and radiation.”

We are afraid of dying or losing someone we love, or losing the love of someone we still love.

We are afraid we won’t have money when we need it most or the health to enjoy what money brings when we finally have it.

We are afraid for our children’s future and whether there will be enough food and water on the planet to support the exploding population, or what it means if the ice caps continue to melt at the current rate.

We are afraid for the near and far, the preservation of the Exuma cays or the survival of the humpback whale.

We are afraid of so many things – but mostly they are personal. We fear living in a world where everyone else, it seems, is more tech savvy than we are. We are afraid to admit that we only know how to use 10 percent of what our cell phones or tablets are capable of. (It doesn’t help that they are called “smart” devices just to remind us how dumb we are!)

Yesterday’s biggest fears--like fear of public speaking--seem trivial now in a social climate where politics and world order and technology gallop so fast that major changes that once took place over the years now happen in hours.

This is not meant to be a somber topic. It’s real, it’s the world we live in as we try to adjust to the pace of change. We have become unwitting passengers speeding on an F1 track of a speeding high tech, whirlwind life. We are teetering and frail, standing on the cusp of the fourth iteration of the Industrial Revolution, the rapid-fire roll-out, acceptance of, and support system economy of AI.

Suddenly, we have replaced wanting to keep up with the Joneses with wanting to keep up with technology. And we should, because fearing technology--including the advances and wonders of artificial intelligence--will not make it go away any more than wishing the bumps and rashes that popped up on our face and arms and belly weren’t chicken pox. Unlike the infectious disease, AI is not going to ‘clear up in a few weeks.’ AI is not merely here to stay. It will get smarter and smarter. And it will do more and more both behind the scenes and in our personal, day-to-day lives.

By this time next year, it is very likely that there will hardly be an aspect of economic, medical, academic, and even cultural activity that is not aided or supported in one way or another by AI. The rapidity of adoption guaranteed its advancement. And with greater investment in chips, cloud storage, and other tech support systems, AI will dominate, creating within the next year or two its own branch of economic activity.

Any ship of resistance to artificial intelligence has sailed -- though there will continue to be those who worry about ethical implications of its potential to one day control thought and action or so closely resemble a celebrity you won’t be able to tell who is real and what is fake.

But, while we adjust to change--even if we are, or initially were, afraid of it as we are afraid of so many things--there is one fear that remains the greatest fear of all: It is the fear of our greatest selves.

In a quote often mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela -- and it does sound like him – the haunting words are actually from a poem by Marianne Williamson. The words go like this:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure

It is our light, not our darkness

That most frightens

We are, if we are honest, most afraid of ourselves.

Our greatest fear is not the change outside our window. It is the fear inside our heart. We blame it on everything else. “The world is moving too fast,” we say. There is too much reliance on technology and this ‘AI thing.’ We tremble not because we are not capable of adjusting, but because we cannot get out of our own way and move from that dark place that we grew accustomed to, to the place where we become the person we were born to be.

Our feeling of inadequacy masks our lack of courage. The one thing we are most afraid of is us. And that phobia of change is the nail in our slow death by inaction. We need not be afraid.

If the world’s most significant changes were made one step at a time, we, too, can begin our own journey to find our own ‘powerful beyond measure,’ just as poet Marianne Williamson said so many years ago.