We’re all going to die (but not from AI): In this month’s cover story the science writer Philip Ball argues that AI’s threat to mankind is a story imposed by the AI industry itself—in a mix of self-interest and Silicon Valley’s cultish, peculiar worldview. In twin essays, Rana Dasgupta and Aslı Aydıntaşbaş consider what the end of US hegemony will mean for America and the world, while in an exclusive investigation Katherine Denkinson shows how people seeking child sex abuse material found each other on TikTok. Plus, Ben Ansell on his week as a supposed radical and satirist Henry Morris on how Andy Burnham’s private encounter with Donald Trump might have gone, while the novelist, broadcaster and games designer Naomi Alderman writes the diary. And in the culture, Jane O’Grady considers the legacy of the Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, the novelist Elif Shafak speaks to Graeme Green on losing her homeland, and David McAllister meets the artist Anish Kapoor.