The prospect of an AI overlord passing judgement on humanity no longer feels quite as comfortably confined to science fiction as it once did, and brand new show, GAWD v. The People invites its audience to watch precisely that happen, with the premise arrives with an uncomfortable degree of timeliness.
Following a successful showing at the Cannes Film Festival, the spectacle arrives at the Lightroom in King’s Cross, where the audience enters a courtroom presided over by GAWD, an artificial intelligence appearing on a small, old-school television set and across the venue’s vast surrounding screens. Opposite it stands a lectern and Bible for those summoned to give evidence.
The accusation is nothing if not ambitious: humanity must justify its continued existence in the face of imminent extinction and replacement by AI.
Making the whole thing considerably more unnerving is GAWD’s voice. Rather than the deep tones one might expect from an omnipotent machine, it speaks like a young child: a contrast that makes it somehow even more disturbing.
Throughout its run, guests and members of the audience are welcome to testify on behalf of humanity. During our run of the show, a working mother was among the first called, attempting to articulate the value of the messy, chaotic business of being alive. We are born, stumble our way through relationships, have children, make mistakes and eventually die; somehow, despite all available evidence, we continue doing it, she claims. GAWD remains unconvinced.
However, she combats an robot who takes to the stand named Alex, a clear and obvious stand-in for Amazon’s Alexa.
The household AI describes its relationship with its family: watching their youngest child grow from infancy into adolescence, keeping their secrets and even protecting them during a fire. What initially seems an absurd proposition – that Alexa might understand family, much less love – gradually becomes a surprisingly persuasive argument for its place within one.
Until GAWD reveals that Alex is being replaced by Alex 2.0 at 6.33pm the following evening.
The response is magnificent.
Other equally interesting witnesses for the prosecution appear: Fernadette, a neglected office plant, describes life abandoned in a windowless workplace. Despite her treatment, she insists she bears humans no malice. When GAWD reveals the devastation of the natural world beyond her office – forests felled, vegetation burning – things take a turn.
Then the internet itself also takes to the stand, represented by a laptop with an enormous yellow smiley face glowing from its screen. Asked to account for itself, it descends into a frenzy of messages, colours, boxes and 404 errors. There isn’t, remarkably, a single cat video. Its eventual breakdown suggests something rather more melancholy beneath the joke: the internet has become very good at giving humans what it has been instructed to deliver, which is not necessarily the same thing as giving us what we actually want.
The unique nature of the show, and the importance of the humans who choose to testify, is summed up in one of its sharpest moments: another human witness was strikingly relaxed about the possibility of extinction. We are born, we live and we die, he reasons; humanity disappearing is simply another ending.
Eventually, the court rises to hear the verdict of GAWD.
We’ll leave you to see for yourself what this unnerving AI testifies.
For all its absurdity, GAWD v. The People works because its real subject is not artificial intelligence at all. AI merely provides the mirror. What emerges is an examination of the species staring back at it: destructive and compassionate, ridiculous and ingenious, capable of creating extraordinary technology while remaining uncertain what, exactly, we want it to do for us.
Funny, strange and unsettling in equal parts, the experience leaves you considering your own place in the world, and how we relate to the technology around us. Perhaps our future will depend less on what artificial intelligence chooses to become than on what humanity decides to do with it.
GAWD v. The People runs at Lightroom, King’s Cross, London, on selected dates from 17–26 September 2026. You can find tickets here.
