Dear God, Will You Turn Out the Lights When We’re Gone!
Everyone seems to have a loud, emotional "truth" about complex technologies they barely understand. From AI energy panic to prophecies of complete doom, we are losing sight of science, common sense, and democracy. Let’s look at why trust is humanity’s Achilles’ heel—and how we can start healing it together.
This afternoon, I stood in my kitchen chopping carrots and late-season kale for a big pot of homemade soup. Outside my window, the late October hills are putting on a final, fiery show of crimson and gold before winter settles in. Cooking a meal from scratch after a brisk walk in the cool air always grounds me. It reminds me of my days studying electrical engineering, or later, sitting in the cockpit flying an instrument flight plan in "the soup". When you are flying through thick clouds, you cannot rely on your gut feelings—your inner ear will lie to you every single time. You have to trust your instruments, respect the laws of physics, and follow the checklist.
Lately, though, it feels like half the world has thrown the checklist out the window. Everywhere we look, people are shouting passionate, emotional "truths" about remarkably complex systems they know almost nothing about.
As a retired software engineer who spent over thirty-five years building systems from the circuit board up to the executive suite, I see this constantly with Artificial Intelligence. Because I still love pushing computers to see what they can really do, I like to look at the actual data. Instead of calm engineering discussions, we get wild emotional swings. Just look at AI from two angles: energy and its potential to reshape society.
On the energy front, people are locked in a panic. One camp swears AI data centers will drain the power grid dry next week, while another acts like electricity comes out of the wall by magic. Where is the plain common sense? Any electrical engineer will tell you that massive compute requires serious megawatts, yes—but history also shows us how quickly we innovate toward efficiency, from smaller, localized models to smarter grid management. You don't fix an engineering challenge with a tantrum; you fix it with math and better design.
We see the same emotional whiplash when people argue about how AI will change society. Scholars call this the "digital double bind," where technology holds the power for both incredible human flourishing and terrible control. On the bright side, we have breakthroughs like AlphaFold mapping proteins to revolutionize medicine, and everyday patients using AI to translate complex medical jargon and take charge of their health. Across the globe, the stakes are life and death—think of students in a repressive country relying on a digital "Underground Railroad" of VPNs and satellite uplinks just to smuggle truth past censors, or facing the terrifying reality of automated state repression when technology is weaponized against them. Yet, instead of grappling with these real human stories, the loudest voices online scream about "Complete Doom," convinced that sentient machines will vaporize us all by morning.
Why are we trading facts for hysteria? Because major social platforms are designed to reward outrage and divisive, emotional content over measured conversation. Meanwhile, bad actors use generative AI to flood our feeds with noise, exhausting our minds until truth feels impossible to verify. In the process, we are abandoning the pillars that keep us free: science, democracy, simple common sense, and the biggest word of all—Trust.
Trust is humanity’s Achilles’ heel, and right now, it doesn’t look good. A democracy cannot function when citizens are trapped in echo chambers, furious about things they don't understand and suspicious of every neighbor. Some days, watching the endless shouting match, I want to look up at the sky and say, Dear God, will you turn out the lights when we’re gone!
Thankfully, as a fellow traveler on the road of recovery, I have learned that fear is just a feeling—not a final verdict. We don't have to stay hooked to the digital rage machine. In my work as a Liberation Technologist, hope comes from building real solutions: "glass-box" AI tools whose reasoning we can actually inspect, and decentralized networks built on a human "web of trust" rather than corporate manipulation. We can step back from the noise, ask honest questions, and choose curiosity over panic. The lights are still on, my friends—and together, we can keep them shining.