I am not against progress. I am asking us to remember its price ..... We are living through what can only be described as the golden age of technology. Everywhere you look, there is an unmistakable air of celebration – something that has only been enhanced with the advent of AI. Artificial intelligence has turned the global landscape into a grand festival of possibilities; be it engineers, or leaders, or everyday creators – people are rushing to experiment, build, and deploy at a pace unprecedented in human history. Under the banner of progress, we are driving and diving headfirst into new frontiers, eager to harness tools that promise speed, automation, and near-magical capabilities.
Yet, beneath this electric enthusiasm lies a disturbing trend: a growing disregard for the consequences on the downside of this movement. It is becoming more and more clear that we are not truly aware of the risks that lie inherent in our push for garnering the benefits of this clearly transformational new field. In our rush to innovate and harness the proceeds and the riches, we are embracing higher levels of risk, completely unmindful of the structural fragility we might be building into our future.
Drunk on Past Victories
Why are we moving so fast with so little caution? Because we are intoxicated by our past successes. We look back at previous technological revolutions—the internet, mobile computing, cloud architectures—and remember primarily the triumph. We recall how they multiplied wealth, modernized industries, and expanded human convenience.
In our euphoria, however, we forget that every breakthrough is a double-edged sword. Success has bred a subtle form of arrogance. We treat past victories as a guarantee of future safety, ignoring the reality that every powerful shift carries an equal measure of latent risk. By mixing unvetted outputs, compressed safety audits, and relentless market pressure, we are assembling a volatile cocktail.
The Short Memory of the Tech World
The collective memory of the modern tech ecosystem is remarkably brief. We have conveniently wiped away the lessons of past booms and busts. We forget the speculative collapse of the dot-com crash, the erosion of digital privacy, and the psychological fallout of unbridled social media algorithms. Each time, technology promised pure liberation, but delivered collateral damage along the way—shattered trust, economic shocks, and broken promises. While the benefits are beyond debate – we as a society are decidedly better off today by almost any yardstick – yet, what has me genuinely worried is that we are showing signs of learning nothing from our past.
Today, as we race to integrate AI models, tools and agents into the foundation and bedrock of critical business operations, we are repeating the exact same pattern. But the stakes this time are exponentially higher. When non-deterministic systems are given core operational control without adequate guardrails, we aren't just taking calculated risks—we are gambling with infrastructure, basic processes, and our own real life dependencies. Further, we are also exposed in financial terms as ever-larger sums of money flow into the AI bandwagon.
Watching the Zalzala
This brings me to a deeply haunting realization. As the world wildly rushes forward into this fiery storm, blindly cheering for every incremental launch, I find myself standing still.
I look around at the frantic momentum and feel a quiet, stunned gravity. To witness collective blind faith in unproven systems feels like watching an inevitable collapse in slow motion—or, as I wrote in a personal poem recently: Main stabdh ho nihaaroon aataa Zalzala (I stand frozen, watching the incoming earthquake). It is sobering to see how easily society trades long-term resilience for short-term speed, normalizing errors until a system fails catastrophically.
The Nuanced Path Forward
Let me be clear: I am not against technology.
I am not against artificial intelligence, nor am I blind to the undeniable prosperity it can create. When crafted with wisdom and engineering discipline, technology forms a harmonious symphony with modern society—expanding human potential, solving complex problems, and creating genuine value.
I am not against the spirit of innovation or the joy of building the future. What I oppose is the reckless amnesia that so often accompanies it. We must not allow the grand promises of tomorrow to make us deaf to the hard lessons of yesterday. Behind every unguided disruption lie painful costs, displaced lives, and shattered dreams that could have been preserved with simple foresight.
The Need for Proportional Caution
True progress does not require blind risk-taking. Innovation and caution are not enemies; they are essential partners.
As we continue to build and adopt the most transformational tools in human history, we must demand more than raw technical performance. We must demand accountability, depth, and systemic guardrails. Before the ground beneath us begins to shake, let us slow down just enough to remember where we have been—so we can safely navigate where we are going.
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