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

 



    !["What Rough Beast" event flyer graphic](/sites/g/files/omnuum716/files/styles/hwp_5_4__480x385/public/2026-09/9-14%20Rogue%20Beast%20H.jpg?h=6a472008&itok=yVHlXLnS) 

 



 

####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **September 14, 2026** 

 04:00PM - 05:15PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Lewis Hall**  

 [1557 Massachusetts Ave  
5th Floor  
Cambridge, MA 02138  
United States



 ](<https://www.google.com/maps?q=US MA Cambridge 02138 1557 Massachusetts Ave 5th Floor>) 



 

 [ In-Person RSVP (Harvard ID Holders) arrow\_circle\_right ](https://forms.gle/YEXKwV9kPQCoAErBA) 

 



 

The recent explosion of AI capacity, along with booming prophecies about its limitless potential, arrives at a moment of profound unease. Just over a century ago, in the aftermath of the First World War, W.B. Yeats gave poetic form to a similar anxiety. In The Second Coming, he described an old order unraveling; “the centre cannot hold,” and something new and uncertain is taking shape.

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?”

Is AI, then, a new Copernican moment? Not because it moves us in the cosmos, but because it unsettles our sense of what makes us central, distinct, and human. What would it actually mean for AI to surpass us? We exercise judgment, form relationships, create culture, make meaning, and act from values and beliefs. As AI becomes more and more capable, which, if any, of these practices remain distinctly ours?

Philosopher and responsible AI leader [Ken Archer](http://www.kenarcher.org/), who heads Responsible AI at Microsoft, and [Jackson Kernion](https://jacksonkernion.com/), who leads the human feedback program at Anthropic, join literary scholar and BKC Faculty Associate [Moira Weigel](https://cyber.harvard.edu/people/moira-weigel) to consider whether Yeats’ apocalyptic vision has become not just “rough,” but rogue — and whether it will leave, or already has left, humanity behind. This conversation launches All Too Human: How AI Is Changing the Ways We Make Meaning, a year-long series examining how AI is reshaping our relationships, beliefs and values, art and creativity, and our most intimate emotional experiences.



 

 [ Zoom RSVP arrow\_circle\_right ](https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_y5i4K_J4R9GNEu6ohDG1EA) 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 See also:- [ AI ](/event-categories/ai)
 
 

 Share on:- [     Facebook ](#)
- [     Twitter ](#)
- [     Linkedin ](#)
 


 Save: [ Add to calendar calendar\_today ](https://www.fas.harvard.edu/node/3521/event-feed.ics)  Copy link link