![Thresholds, by Cathleen Clarke. Courtesy the artist and Margot Samel, New York City](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/CUT_24smaller-900x0-c-default.jpg)
Thresholds, by Cathleen Clarke.
Courtesy the artist and Margot Samel, New York City
New Books
Because I’ve written about government conspiracies, I sometimes hear from crazy people. “Only the intervention of AI can stop Man from creating Hell cybernetically,” one wrote recently. “It would be better to have AI either remake us or end us as a species.” Tough, but fair. I read such screeds with great interest. Sometimes I’ll google my correspondents, looking for signs of their decline, the lives they led before illness consumed them. As a recreational drug user with a robust knowledge of the CIA’s mind-control program, I worry, a bit romantically (i.e., grandiosely), that I might join their ranks…