Most of us aren't quite sure how we're supposed to feel about the dramatic improvement of machine capabilities--the class of tools and techniques we've collectively labelled, in shorthand, artificial intelligence. Some people can barely contain their excitement. Others are, to put it mildly, alarmed. What proponents of either extreme have in common is the conviction that the rise of A.I. will represent a radical discontinuity in human history--an event for which we have no relevant context or basis of comparison. If this is likely to be the case, nothing will have prepared us to assimilate its promise or to fortify ourselves against the worst outcomes.

Back in 2016, a month before the EU referendum, I went along to the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford to interview its director, the Swedish-born philosopher Nick Bostrom, who had just written a book called Superintelligence. The book outlined the existential risk to democracy and humanity implied by advances in machine learning. Bostrom's institute, which sought to weigh the apocalyptic potential of various humanity-threatening forces, had just been given a £1m grant by Elon Musk. If I think about that encounter, I remember three things. The first was that when I arrived a bed was being delivered to the institute, cementing the belief that anxiety about impending catastrophe was, these days, a 24/7 kind of occupation.

Among them is that systems of governance are not immortal and that democracies can devolve into autocracy. As institutions decay and social norms fray, democratic processes and practices are prone to apathy, demagoguery and disintegration. One scholar ringing the loudest alarm bell--or perhaps death knell--is David Runciman. He is a professor of politics at Cambridge University and the author of "How Democracy Ends". His replies are followed by an excerpt from the book. Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.

The longer you spend with the entrepreneurs behind the video game industry cluster in Cambridge, the more the forthcoming general election begins to seem a trifling, parochial concern. Compared with the momentous significance of the vote to leave the EU, next month's election barely registers for people such as Mark Gerhard, CEO of Playfusion, a video game company (pictured above) employing 58 people, of whom about 60% are from the EU. Almost all of us are disengaged from it. The cruel thing is that it doesn't affect us; if it goes really bad we can change our situation, we can solve it," he says. For people working in Cambridge's science parks, part of the hi-tech, global knowledge economy, the fallout from the Brexit vote is still the key political issue. Cambridge voted 74% to remain, and the shock of seeing things not go their way remains palpable. Bosses and senior employees in this tech cluster are highly educated and relatively well-off, and have many choices about where they base themselves. For the moment, this is Cambridge, but many are watching and waiting, contemplating their next steps, ready to leave the country should things turn unfavourable. In the months after the Brexit vote, Gerhard (who is originally from South Africa, but has lived here for 19 years and now has citizenship) was so dismayed to feel, as an immigrant, like he no longer belonged, that he contemplated moving to America. The election of Trump put paid to that idea, he says, but he is clear that should Brexit-related developments make it harder for his company to thrive in the UK, he will relocate. "It's not a threat; the reality is that for highly skilled individuals, the world is borderless.