The launch last November of ChatGPT set off a worldwide wave of hysteria that perhaps the end of humanity was nigh: AI would soon render humans irrelevant or turn us into subservient serfs to supersmart, superpowerful high-tech monsters.

This segment of What’s Ahead explains that we should recall what President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his inaugural address at a time of genuine crisis, the pit of the Great Depression: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

AI will actually be a boon in numerous areas, especially healthcare. The dread that AI will someday create sentient, independent-minded robots or entities with human-like consciousness is impossible.

More than 200 years ago people were fascinated and frightened by electricity. This was the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s classic, Frankenstein, in which a scientist using electricity creates a monster. That was science fiction. So are the wild worries about AI.