Will we worship the AI?

It’s hard to believe that only five years ago the word/acronym AI was barely seen outside the science pages, and even then solely in the most speculative way: as something that might happen, in a few decades, maybe, if you’re the dreamy type. But also maybe not.

Now there literally isn’t a day that goes by without some new AI revelation/epiphany/scare story. Just looking at the AI news right now, when we are all meant to be stuffed into silence by the last of the Nyetimber and cold goose-fat potatoes, I can see these headlines: ‘Rise of AI fuels looming water crisis for the world’, ‘Big Tech outspends venture capital firms in AI investment frenzy’, ‘Artificial intelligence promises to transform diagnosis of heart disease’, ‘Huge evolution in AI and deepfakes puts people at risk of festive scams’ and – a personal favourite – ‘I was shocked: my husband was using AI to write our children’s bedtime stories’ (what a clever idea).