At the “Brains on Silicon” conference in Dresden, You.com founder Richard Socher said artificial intelligence will be able to perform nearly every intellectual task better than humans in the coming decades and called for more courage in Germany, arguing that those who want to help shape this future must not fear change. In a conversation with Jakob von Lindern, head of the Digital department at *Die Zeit*, Socher discussed self-improving AI, the current security debate, and what school and college education would look like if programs took over tasks previously performed by humans. According to Socher, Recursive is building an AI designed to improve itself; the company has raised $650 million and is valued at approximately $4.65 billion, and he founded it with seven co-founders, including researchers from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Meta. The core idea is the scientific method: an AI generates new ideas, implements them in program code, and tests the results through experiments, and if an AI is made to address its own weaknesses, it improves itself. Socher said Recursive has relied on agents from the very beginning and considers apocalyptic exaggeration misguided, saying there is no realistic scenario in which AI would wipe out humanity.