We live in dark, depressing and – frankly – terrifying times. Will technology push us over the edge or help us exit our many crises?

Today we live in an era defined by crisis. Indeed, we are facing multiple overlapping threats at once: from accelerating climate breakdown to the rise of authoritarianism across the world, we are in a situation that the historian Adam Tooze calls “polycrisis”. It is no wonder that hope is scarce, pessimism is high and despair is pervasive. As one meme that captures the grim, morbid mood of our age reads: “My retirement plan is civilisational collapse.”

But not everyone shares this gloomy outlook. On the extreme other end of public sentiment sit Silicon Valley billionaires: they are some of the most optimistic people on earth. Of course, it’s easy to be optimistic when you are sitting on enough money to sway national politics. And yet, the source of their optimism isn’t simply money. It is also a deep-seated faith in unfettered technological advances.