The elevator doors opened like the top being peeled away on a can of sardines, and at least half a dozen squirming pink bodies blinked out at us, crammed shoulder to shoulder in the absurdly small elevator. They shuffled their feet and pretended not to see me, not to see my wheelchair or the flight of stairs visible through the glass walls. No one got out, but the doors remained open, ignorantly optimistic. After a few awkward seconds, a hand darted out from somewhere in the middle of the group and jabbed the Close button.

In its combination of the already-known, AI cannot respond to the important challenges of our age–climate change, various forms of prejudice, the inequalities of capitalism and settler colonialism, incipient fascisms. We need, more than ever, art and thought that gives us the authentically new, that tells us something about human life beyond the norms of media normativity of tech platforms and billionaire tyrants.