This chapter charts the author’s personal and professional journey from an evangelist for AI to an AI critic. It begins by exploring the binary visions of AI’s future: the utopian promise of solving global challenges (curing cancer, reversing global warming) against the existential danger of narrowly optimized superintelligence. The narrative details the author’s tenure at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, where initial excitement over a commitment to “AI for the common good” and ethical development turned to disillusionment as core ethical initiatives were deprioritized, licenses were changed, and the organization’s focus seemed to shift, and his time as a lecturer on AI, law, and ethics at the University of Texas at Austin. This experience propelled the author into a deep dive into the burgeoning legal and ethical challenges of generative AI (GenAI). The chapter concludes by arguing that GenAI is the decade’s most consequential technology, yet its rapid, legally ambiguous rise is largely outside public consciousness. It makes a forceful call for greater AI literacy and public involvement to ensure that society, rather than a handful of companies, shapes how this technology transforms our world.