#  What Rough Beast…? On AI’s Potential to Surpass Humanity 

 



    ![Great sphinx with human woman in foreground](/sites/g/files/omnuum756/files/styles/hwp_5_4__480x385/public/2026-09/Rough-beast_%2817646625512%29_0.jpg?itok=aX8EcCYY) 

 



 

####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **September 14, 2026** 

 04:00PM - 06:00PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Lewis International Law Center 515**  

1557 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02138

 

 

 



 

The recent explosion of AI capacity, along with booming prophecies about its limitless potential, arrive at a moment of unease. Across the developed world, trust in human beings, their institutions and the future they might build is at a nadir. There is a growing dread that our guiding paradigms are coming unravelled, and we are simply not up to the tasks of either preserving or replacing them.

Just over a hundred years ago, in the wake of the first world war, the Irish poet WB Yeats felt a similar uncertainty. Things, he warned, were falling apart. The old center could no longer hold, and now some new revelation must be on the way, to take the place of the old Christian one. He imagined this new revelation in the form of a sphinx, rising from the desert sand, its gaze “blank and pitiless as the sun,” and ended the poem wondering “what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

Our own worries might be less mythological in color, but they are similarly apocalyptic. For many observers and builders, the much-prophesied rise of full robot agency is either a welcome relief for a hapless and exhausted race, or the final stage of our tragic obsolescence. But are the prophecies true? Will AI truly be able to surpass human beings? What exactly would that mean? Are there capacities that machines cannot, in principle, ever attain? To examine these important questions, Harvard’s Public Culture Project and Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society are joining forces to present a conversation titled “What rough beast . . . ? Will AI surpass humanity?” The conversation will take place on September 14th, from 4 - 6 pm, and will feature Ken Archer, philosopher and head of Responsible AI at Microsoft, and Jackson Kernion, philosopher and technical staff at Anthropic. The conversation will be moderated by Harvard’s own Moira Weigel, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Berkman Klein Center Faculty Associate.



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Public Culture Project ](/event-categories/public-culture-project)
 
 

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