UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGES OF AI in Spring 2026 (CM5097)

Artificial intelligence is everywhere in today’s headlines, simultaneously hailed as a revolutionary breakthrough, feared as a looming threat, and debated as if it were an unstoppable force. But AI is not a singular invention: it is a shifting set of technologies and ideas, bound up with the values and power relations of those who build and govern it. To understand AI critically, we need to see through the hype and doomerism, and ask deeper questions: Who designs and legitimises these systems? Who benefits from AI’s promises, who shoulders the risks and labour that sustain it? And, ultimately, why is AI dominating the present moment, and how can we question, resist, and reimagine it?