Years ago I was hiking alone to Bridal Veil Falls in Rocky Mountain National Park. It had been a dry winter and there was no snow on the trail. The morning of the hike it snowed about an inch or two. As I headed out of McGraw Ranch, I was making fresh footprints in the snow.

About two miles into the hike I saw tracks in the snow laterally across the trail. I looked closely and there were four toes, with a three-lobed heel. It was the first time I had seen a mountain lion track, and the size indicated it was not a small cat. As I kneeled on the ground, measuring the tracks with the ruler printed on the back page of my book, Scat and Tracks, I jumped to full height. (I dunno, is it a little weird that I own that book?) I did not need to be kneeling in the snow so the mountain lion could think, “Aw, that’s so nice of my lunch to make themselves smaller so I can more easily prepare my meal.”

I gingerly turned back toward the trailhead when I happened across a ranger heading up the trail. I told him about the tracks and he was eager to see them. I showed him the tracks and then turned toward the trailhead. He said, “There’s no need to shorten your hike. You’re tall enough no mountain lion is going to attack you.” I said, “I understand what you are saying, but has anyone told the mountain lion that?” The ranger laughed and I kept walking back to the trailhead, off in search of a safer trail.

I thought of that ranger when I read the New York Times bestseller, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. The authors said we should not listen to the artificial intelligence entrepreneurs who offer confident assurances that AI will never become nefarious. The authors say those creating artificial general intelligence do not even fully understand how it works! It’s like saying, “That mountain lion won’t eat you,” when you know absolutely nothing about the feeding habits of mountain lions.

I was pleased last week when graduates from multiple universities booed as commencement speakers spoke in glowing terms about artificial intelligence. The speakers were caught off guard, confused, flummoxed. In their Silicon Valley bubble, apparently no one dares confront them about the dangers of artificial general intelligence.

An additional concern about AI is that in many nations, safeguards have been put in place to protect people from losing jobs to artificial intelligence, as well as regulate every stage of its development in an attempt to limit its abilities. With the current administration in Washington, that is not going to happen in the US.

Silicon Valley is ruled by people with overactive left brain hemispheres and underdeveloped right hemispheres. The left hemisphere says I have a body. The right says I am a body. The left is interested in what it knows. The right is interested in what it experiences. The left is interested in things, the right is interested in the relationships between people and things. The left is focused on categorization and analysis. The right is interested in putting information in a wholistic context. The left hemisphere is more mechanistic, the right is more organic.

The truth is that the right hemisphere is the primary hemisphere. In a healthy person, information comes into the right hemisphere, is passed to the left for categorization and analysis, and then brought back to the right to be place in context. Unfortunately, in our current world, for 500 years or so, we have valued the left hemisphere over the right. In other words, the half of the human brain that asks how but never asks why is in charge, and that should frighten us all.

Thank goodness some powerful voices are speaking out about the dangers of AI. In a commencement address to Stanford graduates last week, Apple founder Steve Wozniak said, “You all have AI. That’s right, you all have AI, actual intelligence. We’ve discovered it takes nine months to make it.” Wozniak was applauded.

In his first encyclical, Pope Leo said, “Humanity, in all of its grandeur and woundedness must never be replaced or surpassed.” He also said we must “abandon construction of yet another tower of Babel and join forces in building up the common good.”

There are a lot of mountain lions in the Rocky Mountains. Cathy and I have seen tracks in our yard. Last winter Cathy saw one outside the office window. I ran after dark when I lived on Long Island. I do not run after dark in Colorado. Why take a chance with an enemy that is potentially lethal?

And so it goes.