When I was young I used to take apart my father's electronic devices. Radios, clocks, anything with a back that could be unscrewed. I wanted to understand what was inside — what made it work, where the intelligence lived. I was very good at the taking apart. The putting back together was, and I have apologised for this many times, considerably less successful.

That curiosity never left. It just found better outlets.

I have been working with machine learning and AI since before most organisations knew they needed it — back when you had to explain what a data lake was before you could explain what you wanted to do with one. I have talked to some of the best AI researchers in the country about what these systems can and cannot do, and I have come away with something more valuable than an opinion. I have come away with an honest picture.

And the honest picture is this: what is coming is not incremental. It is the kind of shift that happens once or twice in a civilisation.

James Lovelock — the scientist who gave us the Gaia hypothesis and spent a century thinking more clearly about the future than almost anyone — was optimistic about artificial superintelligence in a way that surprised people. He believed it would not replace us. He believed it would free us. That the arrival of a genuinely superior intelligence would do for humanity what the printing press did, what electricity did, what the internet did — not diminish what we are capable of, but expand the canvas we get to work on.

I share that optimism. Not the naive version that ignores the risks, but the grounded version that looks at what technology has done to human creativity over time and sees a consistent pattern: every time a machine takes over something humans were doing mechanically, humans find something more interesting to do instead.

There will be a moment — probably sooner than most people think — where the pace of development outstrips our ability to follow it intuitively. Where we feel, briefly, like children again. Like the kid with the screwdriver who has just opened something and is not entirely sure what he is looking at.

I think that moment will be thrilling. I think the world on the other side of it will be more creative, more curious, and more human — not less.

My practical view has not changed: AI will not replace the people who understand systems, people, and outcomes. It will replace the people who were never really doing that in the first place. But zoom out far enough and what you see is not a threat. It is the most interesting thing that has happened in our lifetimes.

I still owe my father a working radio.