Abstract
There are striking parallels between the historic realization that the atomic forces may be harnessed to generate nuclear energy and the recent explosion of research activities and wide proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI). This perspective piece compares and contrasts developments of controlled nuclear fission (CNF) and AI. It also delineates some of the homologies between nuclear energy and AI in terms of the underlying drivers of technological progress, social, economic and environmental challenges, and unimaginable opportunities to transform the course of human civilization. It appears that the course of contemporary AI parallels the trajectory of classical energy generation by nuclear fission; disruptive and unsettling. However, the future prospects of a long-term sustainable NextGen AI may more closely resemble the quest for clean, renewable, and limitless nuclear fusion energy; always pseudorealistic and never decisively resolved.