If you could un-invent something, what would it be?

The urge to un-invent particular innovations or technologies is understandable. We like to imagine a world without afflictions or problems. If we could just reverse a specific invention and wish it away, its harmful impact would be removed.

If we could un-invent the atomic bomb, for instance, we could remove the terrifying spectre of global thermonuclear conflict. If there were no nuclear weapons, the lives of thousands of radiation poisoning victims, afflicted by terrible diseases due to exposure to nuclear weapons testing, would be spared.

However, that way of thinking, noble and commendable as it is, is misguided. We cannot un-invent a technology or innovation, but we can unlearn our destructive ways of using it. For the record, I support the total banning of nuclear weapons.

I am aware that technology can be used to benefit humanity, rather than contribute to our destruction. There is nothing peaceful about nuclear weapons proliferation, and I understand that nuclear technology itself is deployed in medicine and other non-military areas. Nuclear decay processes are used in specific energy generators for certain types of spacecraft. Nuclear processes are used in medical diagnostic imaging techniques.

Let’s not use the ‘peaceful atom’ claim to distract us from the very real dangers of nuclear weapons. It is instructive to note that many of the scientists and physicists who worked on nuclear fission, back in the 1930s, spoke out against the use of that invention for military purposes. I wrote about their efforts to convince authorities of the need to cease military applications of nuclear technology here.

Unfortunately, the US government and the associated scientific-military establishment chose to surge ahead with the Manhattan project, and the rest is history. Only last year, the US Energy Department suggested that a new Manhattan project is required to develop generative artificial intelligence (AI).

The wrong lesson is being promoted by the US authorities. If you want to use AI, that is fine. Please do not turn the race for AI into a ferocious international competition based on paranoid fears. AI can be democratised so that multiple nations can access and develop that technology, not a zero-sum-game race for the winner to take it all.

We need to unlearn the compulsion towards the militarisation of technology. We need to learn international collaboration so everyone can benefit from emerging technologies. The United States, in its pursuit of nuclear weapons, held a monopoly on that technology for decades.

It has used nuclear blackmail to threaten other countries which break away from US-based financial structures. Since Hiroshima, the US has menaced the Global South with nuclear weapons, pushing its financial prescriptions on unwilling countries.

Indeed, the more the US and other big powers menace the Global South, the further the poorer nations are encouraged to pursue nuclear weapons. Nuclear proliferation has actually increased since the early 1990s. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, scientists and experts from that bloc have passed on their skills and expertise to other nations. Seeking employment, they have found renewed purpose in the Global South nations.

Ironically, with all the tensions between Iran and the United States, it is instructive to note that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions were seeded by the United States. In the 1950s, former US President Dwight Eisenhower implemented an Atoms for Peace programme, transferring nuclear technology to the pro-Western Shah of Iran.

We should unlearn the behaviours that drive us to pursue technological superiority for the purpose of national monopolisation. Rather than deploy innovations to generate even more corporate profits, we can make the improvement of the human and ecological conditions the main priority of our efforts.