[Column] Atlas the robot and the A-bomb

On Jan. 28, 2026, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists set its Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, transferring it up from the 89 seconds it was set eventually 12 months. (Reuters/Yonhap)

By Ryu Yi-geun, director of the Hankyoreh Financial system and Society Analysis Institute and editorial author

In August 1945, atomic bombs nicknamed “Little Boy” and “Fats Man” had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Later that 12 months, scientists who contributed to the creation of the world’s first atomic weapons, together with Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and scientists on the College of Chicago, got here collectively to create what we now know because the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 

Two years later, artist and designer Martyl Langsdorf, who occurred to be the spouse of Manhattan Undertaking physicist Alexander Langsdorf, Jr., designed the duvet of the journal. Wishing to convey a way of urgency concerning the potential of a nuclear battle, she selected a clock for her design. This clock is understood immediately because the “Doomsday Clock.” The clock Langsdorf designed was set to seven minutes earlier than midnight. 

As nuclear weapons proliferated all over the world, the time left on the clock ticked away. Since 2007, local weather change has been added to the record of variables that decide how shut we’re to the tip of the world. Since 2024, the potential threats introduced by AI have been mirrored as nicely.

This 12 months, the clock has moved 4 seconds nearer to doomsday, placing us at 85 seconds earlier than midnight. AI was listed as considered one of three main threats that might doubtlessly finish humankind; the opposite two are atomic weapons and local weather change. 

Trying on the inventory market, nevertheless, you’d assume the alternative. Perusing the ETFs listed on the Korean market alone, you’ll discover over 90 which have one thing to do with AI. 

Nowadays, AI is a buzzword that’s used synonymously with “the longer term.” AI is the longer term, and the longer term is AI. 

Everybody appears to be viewing the immense adjustments that will likely be effected by AI by rose-colored glasses. Whether or not it’s people or corporations, and even nations, individuals are going all in on AI to safe a aggressive benefit. 

Amid such hype, it’s troublesome for folks warning concerning the risks of AI to realize a lot traction. Within the AI period, voices calling for human rights and private information protections, for security nets and measures to stop weakening of labor rights, are sometimes solid as coming from the suitable place, however naïve nonetheless. 

Two years in the past, Hollywood movie employees staged a strike over AI and the capital behind it. Chatting with a Hankyoreh reporter, they spoke passionately about how AI adopted by corporations trying to minimize prices was threatening their livelihoods. The message they had been sending to us from throughout the Pacific was clear: “You may be subsequent.” 

Earlier this month, the CES commerce present, billed because the “strongest tech occasion on the earth,” was held in Las Vegas, just some hours’ drive from LA. The discuss of the occasion was a humanoid robotic known as “Atlas.” Named after the determine in Greek mythology condemned to carry up the heavens, the robotic symbolizes the facility to exchange human labor with automation. 

Expectations of the robots being deployed to factories inside two years despatched share costs skyrocketing for Hyundai Motor Group — the guardian firm of Boston Dynamics, which designed and manufactures Atlas. 

Hyundai Motor Group’s new humanoid robotic, “Atlas.” (courtesy of Hyundai Motor Group)  

The inventory surge calmed down as soon as Hyundai’s labor union, a department of the Korean Steel Staff’ Union, which is itself beneath the umbrella of the Korean Confederation of Commerce Unions, unexpectedly issued a press release. The union declared that it wouldn’t enable a single robotic into the corporate’s work websites with no formal settlement between the agency and the union. 

This could possibly be seen as workers of conglomerates who receives a commission beneficiant salaries combating the tide of the instances, however the risk they really feel is existential. 

In anticipation of job disruption attributable to the utilization of robots in manufacturing services, the union wrote the next in its publication.

“Based mostly on the typical annual wage of 100 million gained [around US$69,700], labor prices quantity to 300 million gained [3 workers] for each 24 hours of working a facility. Robots, whereas having an initially excessive price, solely incur upkeep prices as soon as they’re bought. It’s due to this fact within the pursuits of traders in search of the maximization of income in the long run to make use of robots,” the union wrote. “AI-driven robots within the workforce have gotten a actuality.”  

After Hollywood employees, it might be Korea’s automotive business employees whose jobs AI comes for subsequent — or it could possibly be you, the reader of this text, and your loved ones. 

In the course of the Industrial Revolution in Nineteenth-century England, there was a revolutionary motion of employees within the textile business, against sure automated equipment, who known as themselves “Luddites.” Simply as their motion failed, there’ll come a second when AI crushes unions’ resistance and replaces their labor. 

The true downside is that voices vital of AI are more and more dying down and fading away. Simply two to 3 years in the past, the world’s intelligentsia and main figures had been calling for placing the brakes on AI, warning that if we didn’t, humanity may face an immense risk. Pc scientist Geoffrey Hinton, who has been known as “the godfather of AI,” has persistently warned about AI bringing concerning the finish of humanity. Now, one hardly hears any form of name for restraint. 

AI is a double-edged sword for humanity. Whereas it might help some of their work, it’ll threaten the roles of others. Whereas it might contribute to prosperity, some view it as doubtlessly disastrous for our communities. 

In an interview with CNBC on Jan. 13, Warren Buffett, a legendary investor and one of many richest males on the earth, stated that “the genie is out of the bottle” when it got here to AI, evaluating the phenomenon to nuclear weapons. Buffett acknowledged that it’s unimaginable to place the AI genie again into the bottle, however identified that even business leaders don’t know the place the know-how is heading.

Maybe AI will destroy humanity earlier than nuclear weapons do; maybe it’ll be the opposite means round. Such a horrific thought could turn into a actuality even sooner if we surrender on attempting to assume critically concerning the risks that AI actually poses to our lives. 

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