Should we be building intelligence more powerful than our own, and can a society that is distracted and tired hold a decision of that scale?
Andrea Miotti makes the case for a prohibition on superintelligence, and traces it back to where it began with a handful of people long before chatbots existed. Alexander Beiner tests that case, not as a sceptic of the danger, but on behalf of everyone trying to make sense of it from the outside.
Almost everyone agrees something significant is happening. What we disagree on is what it is, how fast, and who gets to decide. The companies call it inevitable. Governments have folded it into a race. Others call the whole thing hype that distracts from the harms already here.
What emerges is not fatalism, but a ban on recursive self-improvement, leaving a vast design space for development and discovery to continue. Civic engagement over private despair. And the reminder that nihilism, the sense that this is all already decided, is the one thing most likely to make it so.
“The best time to have this conversation would have been much earlier. The second best time is now.”
Andrea Miotti
“Earth tiled with data centres. AI systems will seek more and more resources, and those resources look very different to farmland, or air we can breathe.”
Andrea Miotti
“It becomes a hyperobject. Something so big that you can never see the full thing.”
Alexander Beiner
“Their goal since the very start was to make AI systems that are more competent, smarter, more powerful than all of humanity combined.”
Andrea Miotti
“It turns out we are really not very good at differentiating between the appearance of agency and the real thing.”
Alexander Beiner
“Much like if a bank started a money laundering department, the recursive self-improvement department should not be allowed to exist.”
Andrea Miotti
“Core to the human experience is relationship. Our relationship with one another, with the cosmos, with ourselves.”
Alexander Beiner
“One of the big enemies here, besides superintelligence, is nihilism. That feeling of, well, we are all screwed anyway. It’s inevitable.”
Andrea Miotti
Show Notes
Founder and CEO, ControlAI
Andrea Miotti is founder and CEO of ControlAI, a non-profit campaigning for a prohibition on the development of superintelligent AI. He co-authored A Narrow Path and The Compendium, drafted the UK Artificial Superintelligence Security Bill, and his parliamentary campaign has drawn support from more than 100 UK lawmakers. His writing has appeared in TIME, The Guardian and Nature.
Author · Founder, Kainos · Co-founder, Rebel Wisdom
Alexander Beiner is a writer, journalist and facilitator. He co-founded Rebel Wisdom, the sensemaking media platform, and now runs Kainos, a studio making films and experiences to help people make sense of a period of upheaval. He is the author of The Bigger Picture, director of the 2025 documentary Leviathan on the breakdown of social trust, and executive director of Breaking Convention.
