In the long human story of navigating new and powerful forces, there is a recurring temptation to fix our gaze on the horizon while stumbling over what lies at our feet. Today, a chorus of researchers and technologists warns that our collective imagination has been captured by speculative visions of artificial intelligence gone catastrophically wrong — visions so vivid and dramatic that they are quietly crowding out examination of the quieter, more mundane harms that AI systems are already visiting upon people in hiring offices, courtrooms, and lending institutions. The question being raised i