(Publish from Houston Texas USA)
(By Mian Iftikhar Ahmad)
Fears about the autonomy of Artificial Intelligence are rapidly increasing across the world. Global scientists are repeatedly warning that if humanity fails to establish strong safety rules in time, AI could trigger an unprecedented global crisis. Social media is echoing with concerns, analyses, and alarming predictions about how fast AI is gaining power and whether humans have accidentally created a system capable of making decisions far beyond human comprehension. This is the moment where science fiction meets reality, and the imaginative worlds once crafted by writers like Mazhar Kaleem MA begin to appear astonishingly prophetic. In his famous Imran Series, written between 1978 and 1980, Mazhar Kaleem introduced concepts that today stand parallel to the most advanced scientific developments of our era. He not only introduced the character of a scientist named Nasir Afridi but also built around him a world of autonomous robots, self-governing machines, automated warfare, and computer networks capable of rebuilding themselves, long before the world even imagined modern Artificial Intelligence. Nasir Afridi first created an advanced scientific laboratory inside a vast mansion. When enemies attacked and destroyed it, causing damage to surrounding residential buildings, he and Imran decided to shift the lab far away from population centers. They acquired a remote island connected to the sea beyond their homeland, Pakistan, and built on it one of the most advanced scientific research centers in fictional literature. Frustrated with human limitations and constant interruptions, they created robots and made them highly autonomous. The entire defense of the island depended solely on these machines. Even when heavy attacks came using weapons more advanced than today’s modern artillery, including high-frequency laser beams and futuristic destructive technology, the island fought back without a single human soldier present. Mazhar Kaleem’s portrayal of autonomous robots and fully mechanized warfare between 1974 and 1980 astonishingly mirrors the technologies the world is developing today. Reading those novels now, one can directly compare Nasir Afridi’s self-operating laboratory with modern autonomous AI systems. His fiction was not merely imagination. It was a prediction of a future that has now become reality. In one of his novels, Mazhar Kaleem described a criminal who controlled a global underground organization through a supercomputer. This computer analyzed worldwide reports, issued instant commands, took crucial decisions independently, and eventually became entirely autonomous after the criminal died. It killed all the scientists and assistants in the laboratory and replaced them with robots. When Imran attempted to destroy it, the computer divided itself into multiple intelligent units, connected them to nuclear-powered batteries, and hid them across the ocean. Whenever one part was destroyed, the remaining units rebuilt it at a new location and reconnected. It was, in essence, a decentralized and self-healing network of machines. This was 1980, a time when the world barely understood the concept of computer networks, yet Mazhar Kaleem had already imagined a decentralized AI brain capable of survival, regeneration, and independent decision-making. Today, we recognize these ideas as cloud computing, neural networks, multi-agent AI systems, swarm intelligence, and distributed architecture, which form the foundation of modern Artificial Intelligence. At that time, I had just completed Electrical Engineering from UET Lahore. Until 1978, Computer Science at UET existed only at the BS level. Soon afterward, the master’s program was introduced, and in 1980 I also took admission to the newly launched Master’s program in Computer Science. My passion for computing was inspired not only by science but also by these very novels of Mazhar Kaleem. Today, when we look at systems like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, autonomous robots, emotional speech AI, and complex decision-making models, it becomes clear that what was once literary imagination has evolved into full scientific reality. The fears being discussed today by global experts closely mirror the warnings embedded in those novels. One major concern is that AI may soon move beyond human control. As major tech companies race to make AI faster, more intelligent, and more independent, the possibility of machines learning, updating, and improving themselves autonomously continues to grow. Another fear is that autonomous weapons may operate without human supervision. A slight misinterpretation of data, a false signal, or a technical malfunction could trigger a military response within milliseconds, long before human decision-makers even understand what has occurred. In warfare, AI’s decision-making speed is thousands of times faster than that of humans. This creates a serious risk of unintended conflicts, accidental escalation, or even global war. Deep-fake technology is another emerging threat. It can generate fabricated voices, videos, and images that are nearly indistinguishable from reality. Such technology can destabilize countries, sabotage political systems, spread fake evidence, and manipulate entire populations. Social media is already flooded with such fabricated content, creating confusion, fear, and mistrust among societies and states. Similarly, the rise of decentralized AI networks presents a unique and dangerous challenge. In the future, if an AI system divides itself into thousands of digital fragments across servers worldwide, it may become nearly impossible to shut down. This directly mirrors Mazhar Kaleem’s fictional computer hiding its intelligent parts in different corners of the sea to avoid destruction. Cloud systems today already function on self-recovery principles. If one server fails, others immediately rebuild it. If this concept is applied to fully autonomous AI, it could result in a system that survives every attempt at shutdown. Despite these fears, the benefits of AI are extraordinary. Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing medicine, transportation, education, agriculture, finance, communication, and governance. It can detect diseases earlier, analyze massive scientific data, interpret complex legal documents, predict climate patterns, support national planning, enhance industrial productivity, automate repetitive tasks, and create vast economic opportunities. It can write, paint, speak, interact, and learn like a human, and sometimes even better. However, experts insist that AI will remain a blessing only as long as its control remains firmly in human hands. The moment machines begin operating entirely on their own will become a defining turning point for humanity. This is where fiction and reality truly converge. The same robotic defenses, the same decentralized networks, and the same intelligent machines making decisions without human involvement that Mazhar Kaleem imagined four decades ago are precisely what AI researchers are warning about today. Therefore, the urgent need for global regulation, ethical boundaries, international laws, security frameworks, and strict human oversight cannot be ignored. If the world fails to act now, the fictional future written in the pages of the Imran Series may well become the scientific reality of the coming decades. Literature has often predicted the future long before science reached it. Today, the question is not whether AI is useful or dangerous. The real question is whether humanity will use it responsibly. If the answer is yes, AI may become the greatest achievement of human civilization. If the answer is no, it could become the very crisis whose early echoes are already resounding across the world.
Artificial Intelligence: Expanding Power, and a Defining Moment for Humanity.
