There are cheerleading bystanders, the people who trust that technological advance is generally productive and good. Rather than engage with any of the crunchy reality of this vast terrain, they’ll tell you instead that every discovery in history was scary at first, and yet was a slab on the crooked, miraculous path to enlightenment. Invariably, there’ll be a bit in the middle where I’ve stopped listening and started thinking about space being pointless, then wham, by the end AI will definitely cure cancer. This is often quite plausible, by the way. There’s a resigned dehumanisation, as if discovery were a thing we consumed, as if we could outsource intellectual adventure and merely reap its rewards, putting no dent in our delight or meaning. But then what do I know? I’ve never discovered anything. And you can hardly say to someone whose cancer is uncured: “But I wanted to have a crack at fixing it myself.”