One night, Grace’s dinner-party guest list included a researcher at one of the big A.I. companies, a professional poker player turned biotech founder, multiple physics Ph.D.s, and a bearded guy named Todd who wore flip-flops, sparkly polish on his toenails, and work pants with reflective safety tape. Todd unfolded a lawn chair in the middle of the living room and closed his eyes, either deep in concentration or asleep. In the kitchen, Grace chatted with a neuroscientist who has spent years trying to build a digital emulation of the human brain, discussing whether written English needs more forms of punctuation. Two computer scientists named Daniel—a grad student who hosts a couple of podcasts, and a coder who left OpenAI for a safety nonprofit—were having a technical debate about “capabilities elicitation” (whether you can be sure that an A.I. model is showing you everything it can do) and “sandbagging” (whether an A.I. can make itself seem less powerful than it is). Todd got up, folded the lawn chair, and left without a word.