War, climate, & AI: World’s three big challenges of 2025

Let us look at some events that made headlines this New Year’s day. In the US city of New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a former US army personnel, rammed his car into a group of revellers, killing 15 people and injuring dozens. The police gunned him down when he tried to open fire at the crowd.

Jabbar had a criminal past, but escaped scrutiny. Innocent US civilians paid the price for the laxity on the part of American intelligence agencies.

For the US, tragedy didn’t end here. Within hours, a truck exploded in front of a Las Vegas hotel, where president-elect Donald Trump had been staying. A passer-by was killed in the explosion. Interestingly, the truck involved in the explosion was a Tesla, manufactured by Trump’s close associate Elon Musk. The third incident was a shootout at a night club in Queensborough, New York, which left 11 people injured. Both incidents are being investigated.

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The US police hadn’t declared the last two incidents as terrorist acts till press time, but they have once again brought to light the growing unease in American society.

Meanwhile, two other incidents that occurred in other parts of the world threaten to have long-term adverse consequences: The first was an Israeli air raid on Gaza that killed 12 people, and the second was Ukraine’s seizure of a gas pipeline that cut supply from Russia to the rest of Europe.

What do these headlines suggest?

Trumps uneasy crown

A crown of thorns awaits Donald Trump in his second innings at the Oval Office. He needs to contend with international and domestic challenges. New Orleans, New York, and Las Vegas have again shown that US invincibility is a veneer. It faces threats from within. In this scenario, how can Trump satisfactorily resolve Israel-Hamas, and Russia-Ukraine conflicts?

The Russia-Ukraine conflict, nearing its third year, is raising doubts about Russian military might and superiority. The past three years have eroded the strongman image Vladimir Putin had assiduously built over the years. History has shown that an autocrat on the decline tries every trick in the trade to destroy others. The gas pipeline incident raises concerns about the likelihood of a rash decision by Putin.

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Does it mean the top priority for 2025 is to stop the wars?

How wars have bled humanity is clear from the data the human rights department of the United Nations has released. UN data from 2024 till 21 October shows 11,973 citizens, including 622 children, were killed in the Russia-Ukraine war. The Palestinian health ministry claims 45,000 people, including 17,000 children, have died in the past 14 months in the Israel-Hamas war.

Now let’s look at the most important issue facing the human race–climate change. The year 2024 was the warmest in recorded human history.

Since the Doha round failed, speculation is rife that challenges for a consensus on climate change actions will intensify in the years ahead. But Trump’s win could weaken the effort to tackle this challenge. Another issue that has piqued our interest and attention is artificial Intelligence (AI). Debates are raging globally about its strengths and pitfalls.

Pertinent questions

Yuval Noah Harari, a professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and historian of world renown, raises some pertinent questions on the issue. He insists that AI can lie, too. Professor Harari gave an example that when Open AI launched ChatGPT4 they asked it to solve a Captcha to test its efficacy. ChatGPT4 couldn’t crack the Captcha. It was later given access to a web page called taskrabbit. ChatGPT4 outsourced the task of cracking the Captcha telling the service provider that it was blind. The engineers who created the algorithms were stunned. They couldn’t fathom how AI learned to tell lies. This is why Harari and other intellectuals are questioning the role of AI. They insist that AI will be lethal as this tool can think and make decisions.

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There’s no doubt that people with malicious intentions will misuse AI. On 21 January 2024, AI was used to clone the voice of the US president Joe Biden and employed to make thousands of automated calls to voters in New Hampshire.

US authorities imposed a fine of $1 million on Lingo Telecom, the company that undertook this operation. India, too, has had actor Rashmika Mandana’s case. So, has science created a Frankenstein’s monster for the human race? And will 2025 be able to create a consensus on the three challenges threatening humanity—wars, climate change, and AI?

Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief, Hindustan. Views are personal.