Long live the new idiocracy

I’ve noticed that the public conversation about artificial intelligence is still stuck on the same Promethean question: will it wake up one day, cut the cord, and turn on the people who built it, like Frankenstein’s monster?

It’s a question as old as storytelling itself, frankly a bit of a cliché. But as a premise, it never stops being gripping. It feeds our imagination, our philosophy, our anxieties, in much the same way ancient myth once did. What I keep wondering, though, is whether it’s a...