What are the key dates in the history of humanity? We do not know exactly when one of our ancestors first lit a fire, nor when another, watching a stone roll, or perhaps observing a dung beetle, came up with the idea of the wheel. We do know, however, that A.D. 476, October 14, 1492, July 14, 1789, May 5, 1815, March 8, 1917, September 1, 1939, July 20, 1969, November 9, 1989, and, closer to our own time, September 11, 2001, all marked events that signified the beginning or end of an era. Then came April 14, 2026.

What happened on that day? The answer is simple. In a country where a war has been raging for four years, in some ways reminiscent of the Great War, the front line, marked by trenches and contested villages that might as well be cities, has shifted almost imperceptibly with the seasons. For the first time in human history, a ground combat unit made up of nonhuman elements defeated a human infantry unit. And those nonhuman elements were capable of operating entirely autonomously, like the drones and clones in Star Wars. It had never happened before, except in the movies. There was a before: now we are living in the after.

For some time, I had been asking myself what theme might define the new season of Turin’s Fondazione Circolo dei lettori, after the previous one that focused on Open Dialogue, given the deeply polarized climate of our times, marked by the persistent delegitimization of political opponents, who are increasingly cast as enemies. Then I came across the news of what had happened that day in April. Suddenly, unsettling ghosts began to materialize. That of HAL 9000, the onboard computer of the Discovery One mission portrayed by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, first and foremost. But also of the replicants, brought to the screen by Ridley Scott in Blade Runner. Both films were based on Sci-Fi novels, the first based on Arthur C. Clarke’s novel of the same name, the second based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, both were set in a future that, as we now know, has become our present far more quickly than we could ever have imagined.

Yes, our present. We are living through a transitional era, which in itself is nothing new. In the 20th century, there was the Belle Époque, the Roaring Twenties and, ultimately, the Cold War. But this time is different, because we are witnessing something unprecedented and irreversible: the definitive transition to the posthuman.

Our species was the most intelligent ever to appear on Earth, even if it hasn’t always seemed that way. But that is now a thing of the past. In recent weeks, increasingly urgent warnings have come from scientists, researchers and technology leaders about what is unfolding in China and Silicon Valley, where the race to create artificial superintelligence is accelerating. Bill Gates has openly warned of an employment catastrophe, while Geoffrey Hinton has confirmed that the danger identified by Jacob Coxon, the young researcher who left Anthropic because he believes AI could soon kill us, is real, even if no one can quantify it. Is the risk 10 percent, or 25 percent? No one knows.

Martin Heidegger warned us long ago. Some 30 years ago, Michel Houellebecq foresaw the age of transhumanism and posthumanism in The Elementary Particles. But as far back as 1955, the philosopher from Trier was already writing: “The world is transforming into a complete domination by technology. Far more disturbing is that man is in no way prepared for this radical transformation of the world.”

It is no coincidence that many of the scientists and researchers who helped create AI have called, without success, for a moratorium on its development. Most recently, the call has been renewed by Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk. And, as it is well known, the Pope has also addressed the issue in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, writing: “I have received very troubling reports concerning increasingly autonomous weapons systems that virtually no human being and no government can truly control.”

There are, of course, skeptics who say we are nowhere near the brink of the Apocalypse. Some dismiss the warnings as little more than apocalyptic marketing; others argue that climate change is the real threat we should be worrying about. The fact remains, however, that there is no precedent for a species of lesser intelligence gaining the power to control a superior one.

“Everything that is human, is taken as a whole, not really worthy of being taken very seriously,” Plato writes in The Laws. But perhaps it is time to take very seriously everything that is no longer human.

That is why the new season of the Fondazione Circolo dei lettori is titled Natural Intelligence: because it is through natural intelligence that, from Homer onward, the great masterpieces of world literature have been created—and continue to find new readers. And because artificial intelligence is nourished by what natural intelligence has understood, studied and created over the course of millennia. There is, incidentally, a very precise name for this: intellectual theft, plain and simple.

We will therefore not limit ourselves to hosting, following Siri Hustvedt, some of today’s brightest minds, from Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer to Leïla Slimani, from Madeline Cash to Eshkol Nevo. We will also launch thematic series devoted to war: "Apocalypse? Wow!" and work: "We Are (Not) the Robots", because the Circolo is increasingly a producer of content.

On October 3, we will celebrate our 20th anniversary, a milestone that is no small achievement in a country that is not known for its reading culture. Twenty years of ideas, books, writers and readers. Twenty years of human intelligence at work. And that, in the end, is what the Circolo has always been about: Natural Intelligence.