This blog post explores artificial intelligence between technological promise, public anxiety and exaggerated doomsday narratives. It asks whether increasingly capable AI systems might eventually outperform human intelligence through their speed, scalability, access to data, parallel learning and potential capacity for iterative self-improvement. At the same time, it emphasises that today’s AI systems remain far from human-like understanding, consciousness or fully autonomous agency.
Rather than treating AI as either a universal solution or an inevitable existential threat, the article focuses on the more immediate dangers created by opaque systems, misaligned objectives, economic incentives, concentration of power, militarisation and inadequate political regulation. These questions form the wider context for *Minerva’s Shadow*, a 2024 play in which three employees confront the personal consequences of globalisation, automation and an increasingly disturbing AI-supported assessment process.