If only we could capture anger and use it as fuel, for lately there seems to be no shortage of the stuff.

It and its twin hate seem to be at the heart of the reactor as social media rages away to become a perpetual motion machine that not only violates the law of conservation of energy but also violates the laws of common sense, dignity and humanity.

Harness that energy, and it will shine like a sun and fry all that basked in its unhealthy glow. Who knows where it will end? Sadly, the death of Charlie Kirk will do nothing to slow the reactors.

Eighty years ago or more, in the optimism that followed war, had you said that another civil war in America was no longer unthinkable, you would have been called mad; now some would call you a Cassandra.

It’s a funny old world, not that there’s presently much to laugh at. Perhaps it’s my dark sense of humour coupled with a wry sense of irony that made this thought chuckle-worthy: all the time I’ve been worried about new threats, it might be an old one that does for us all.

In other words, while I might be losing sleep over the AI apocalypse, perhaps the world will be blown to bits long before that happens; even so, just to be safe, maybe we should start considering AI and social media to be as huge a threat to humanity as weapons of mass destruction.

You see, when Donald Rumsfeld famously said, “There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don’t know,” he was speaking of WMDs, but he could so easily have been speaking of AI.

AI is not the answer if you feel it is; you have misheard the question. It is never the solution, only part of the equation. AI is the tool, not the creation, the tail, not the dog. Forget any of that, and the master becomes the servant. AI was made by man, but it will never be man.

But it may replace him.

The irony is exquisite: we have created machines to solve our problems while simultaneously creating new problems that make nuclear proliferation look straightforward by comparison.

At least with the Cold War, we knew what we were afraid of. Now we are juggling multiple apocalypses: digital, nuclear, social, and environmental, and God alone knows what else is in that Pandora’s Box.

All the while, our rage reactors hum and buzz along, generating infinite energy for our own destruction.

Perhaps that is the real unknown unknown: not whether any single threat will finish us, but whether we will have the wisdom to recognise that our very anger, amplified and weaponised by our own creations, might be the force that blows Pandora’s Box into shards of evil that pierce us all.