Which pill would you choose?

Would you rather “believe whatever you want to believe” or prefer to see “how deep the rabbit hole goes?” Life, fortunately, is not quite as binary as the choices laid out in the iconic film The Matrix. However, the red pill/ blue pill metaphor continues to resonate. When applied to the AI debate it could be framed as whether the technology might result in a digital utopia or, less happily, an algorithmic apocalypse. This dialectic was the centre of a fascinating series of lectures your author attended at The Royal Institution earlier this week.

In the metaphorical blue corner Kay Firth-Butterfield, an eminent lawyer and professor, highlighted how AI in its current form is “not sustainable.” Her concern related not just to the environmental impact – each LLM request apparently uses a quarter of a litre of water in data centre cooling, while the industry already emits more greenhouse gas than the airline sector – but to how AI is “creating stupidity.” She asserted that humans are increasingly being asked to trust in algorithms without questioning the quality of the data and inherent biases built in. Before the technology gets out of control, better regulation is required.

A much more optimistic counter argument was laid out by Dr Pippa Malmgren, an American economist and technologist. Her view – and one to which this author is sympathetic – is that AI can act as an accelerator for innovation. The technology can provide us with new ways of looking at the world and solving previously intractable problems (including energy shortages and pollution). AI has the potential to “expand the reach of all humans.” In such a world view, economics becomes less about managing scarcity and more about harnessing abundance.

What might be an ideal path for AI to take? No-one knows. One plausible way forward might be for the technology to seek to replicate the human brain as closely as possible. Such a view was outlined by the event’s third speaker – Nikolay Gurianov, the founder of Braintree, a tech start-up. Human brains, we learned, are not only highly energy efficient, but they are always optimising, creating and adapting learnings from multiple (and often symbol-driven) inputs. While Braintree is still evolving its technology, the concept is an alluring one. 

From our perspective, it is only natural for humans to be resistant to change. But consider how what was once commonplace – the horse and cart, for example – is now obsolescent. Charles Darwin arguably puts it better than anyone in noting that evolution comes from adapting to reality. Now that the AI age is upon us, there is no turning back.

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Originally Posted on July 9, 2025 – Which Pill Would You Choose?

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