Last Wednesday, many people across Ireland did the same thing: they looked up at the sky.
I was one of them.
On 12 August 2026, the Moon covered around 94% of the Sun during the partial solar eclipse visible from Dublin. While watching this moment, confirmed by NASA’s eclipse data, a different question about AI came to mind.
Understanding changes our relationship with fear
Today, we check the time and weather, put on our eclipse glasses and take photos. We do this because we know what is happening.
In the past, when the darkening of the midday sky could not be explained scientifically, it was sometimes associated with fear and prophecy.
The event did not change. Our ability to understand it did.
How will we look back on today’s AI debates?
While looking at the sky, I asked myself: How will we view the way we talk about AI today, 50 years from now?
“Will AI take our jobs?”
“Will we lose control?”
These are not trivial questions. We need to discuss AI’s impact on work, safety and human agency seriously.
But some of our fears may also come from being in the middle of a technological shift whose consequences we do not yet fully understand.
When we learned to understand an eclipse, the eclipse itself did not disappear. What changed was our relationship with the unknown.
Not more fear or more hype
Perhaps what we need whenever something new happens in AI is not more fear or more hype. Perhaps we need to understand it better.
We need to distinguish between what we know, what we do not yet know and what we are simply assuming.
Of course, a solar eclipse and AI are not the same. An eclipse is a predictable natural event. AI is a technology shaped by people, companies and institutions. Its future also depends on how we choose to govern it.
Last Wednesday’s eclipse left me with a question that will stay with me much longer:
Which ideas about AI that seem almost certain to us today will appear strange 50 years from now?
