The last labor was the most dangerous of all because it involved a perilous journey into the Underworld, which is outside the linear bounds of time, beyond Earth, and even beyond life itself. To reach the miasmal sump, guarded by a fiendish hellhound named Cerberus, Hercules would have to cross five treacherous rivers. The Styx, the “river of hate” that formed the boundary between the Earth and the Underworld, wound around Hades nine times, which represented the three manifestations of the Dark Trinity. It was the nine encirclements of the River Styx that inspired Dante Alighieri in the Middle Ages to write in his Inferno of the nine circles of Hell. The Phelgethon, running parallel to the Styx, was known to the Greeks as a river of fire. Dante later called it a river of blood where the souls were boiled. The Lethe was the river of forgetfulness, while Cocytus was the river of lamentation that flowed into Acheron, the river of woe. The dead had to pay a grim reaper by the name of Charon for the privilege of crossing the Acheron lest they be shoved into an effluvium of rotting corpses.

Cerberus was a huge, black dog with three heads that never slept. One head could see the past, another the present, and the third one the future. Each of the heads had a loathsome coiffure consisting of live snakes that collected knowledge of all three aspects of time. It was very tricky indeed to fool the Hound of Hades and Hercules’ job was made even harder by being ordered to capture Cerberus without weapons and without hurting a single snake on any of its three heads. Hercules swallowed his pride and sought help from Hermes and Athena, and he participated in a psychedelic initiation known as the Eleusinian Mysteries. Hercules learned to overcome his fear and pay incredibly close attention by Hercules is able to capture Cerebus by having him touch the aconitum flower, a poisonous plant that messed with Cerebus’ prognosticative abilities and was able to bind him up using chains made of diamonds.

This myth correlates to the hardest and potentially most dangerous task humans have ever faced. The speed at which computers operate and the associated information technology has doubled every two years for at least 65 years, and we are now in the steepest part of the exponential curve. Artificial Intelligence is already meeting with a large degree of fear and trepidation, as witnessed by the plethora of science fiction films and books about intelligent machines breaking out of human control. Science fiction is rapidly becoming fact and the path we choose and the way we travel that path will determine whether our story ends in apocalypse or utopia. The next paradigm in computer evolution is quantum computing, and quantum computers are already being built inside of isolation chambers 180 times colder than interstellar space. We already know that quantum biology occurs at room temperature in bird navigation, photosynthesis and in the microtubules in the neurons of the human brain, and it is now proposed that it may be involved in consciousness. Quantum computing has recently been demonstrated using pure silicon, as well as in diamonds (like those in the chain that held Cerberus.)

Solution: It is time to pay close attention because we probably won't get a second chance to get it right. Cyberwar is already a fact, and it could easily lead to the hell of World War III. Developing AI as a standalone competitor to humans might also be disastrous for humans—especially if AI develops a mind of its own and decides that humans are a threat. This would be another kind of Hades.

Faced with two existential threats, we should deliberative and speedily choose a third way that allows us to break out of the chrysalis of technology into a world of mutually beneficial symbiosis. This means seeking the cooperative global development of AI in a way that will benefit all of us, while keeping us all involved in the process. This will also mean eventually merging with our technology on a high level. We can begin this process by developing public policy wikis like LOGOS and UNICE that serve to transparently organize facts and reason to aid in governance. AI will eventually be able to summarize the wisdom of the crowd and speak to us in our language in any image we choose. Later still, we may participate with direct brain interfaces that allow us work together at computer speed while still retaining our individuality.