By Zoe Williams
Publication Date: 2026-03-23 13:50:00
AAt an 80th birthday party over the weekend, I met an academic who was evasive about his field. When he finally revealed “computer science,” I asked him why he didn’t want to say it, and he replied, “Because I can’t have another conversation about AI.” Out of stupid manners I couldn’t ask him why not; That would have been another conversation about AI. But I also don’t want to have another conversation about AI.
No one’s opinion, utopian or dystopian, seems to keep pace with the thing itself, so it all has the lazy, dated feel of a BBC Radio 4 afternoon piece on AI. There was one last week, and I listened to it incompletely and thought, “If AI had written that, it would have made a more nuanced assessment of the threat it posed and would have been less insecure, unless the instruction specifically said, ‘Write a dialogue in the style of a role-playing family in a ’90s partisan political show.'”
There are cheering spectators…
