Why does it matter how we talk about artificial intelligence? Some, mainly tech firms and their useful idiots, maintain we are about to immanentize the eschaton (which translates roughly as: dissolve all of society’s problems). Others insist we are summoning a false god in the form of an artificial general intelligence that will destroy civilization. Those feelings of awe and terror aren’t particularly assuaged by the numbers: Tens of billions of dollars are raised each year by startups in this