India, Sept. 19 -- Someone carries a heavy viral load, infected since birth, and is then told that the camera in front of him has been found to carry the same virus. He begins to panic. Should he be terrified of the camera, or of himself? He has been carrying that same virus within himself since the beginning of evolution. The virus has a name. It is called the self, the ego. And it is the one thing the present panic over artificial intelligence has not paused to look at.

The panic has reasons to be loud this month. On 8 September, a 27-year-old researcher who had worked on these systems at two of the world's leading AI laboratories resigned, writing that these companies were "gambling with our lives". Within days, a senior safety resear...