AI and the Human Question
Artificial intelligence refers to computer systems designed to perform tasks associated with human intelligence, including problem-solving, prediction, learning, and language processing. Although AI has existed in various forms since the twentieth century, it has recently moved from specialist fields into everyday life, becoming an increasingly visible feature of work, politics, healthcare, education, and public debate. Financially, AI is often marketed as a competitive advantage, creating the perception that those who adopt it will gain opportunities while those who do not risk falling ‘behind’.
Within the AI landscape, businesses develop and market AI; governments and healthcare providers purchase and use AI; and ordinary citizens are increasingly encountering AI technology within their everyday life or professional work. And of course, within the industry, there is the ongoing discourse—of study, regulation, analysis and AI consultation from researchers, to journalists, to AI companies such as Anthropic.
But, so far, how has the public been responding? As it stands, AI has generated a mixed reaction: from acceptance, excitement, uncertainty to scepticism and, in some cases, hostility and/or outright rejection. Professionally—many debates surrounding AI focus entirely on its critique regarding its legitimacy. So, how do we progress forward while keeping tech folks in check? Further yet beyond questions of productivity and innovation lies a deeper question. What does AI reveal about the societies that create and govern it? By answering that question, we're forced to confront the distribution of power embedded within technological systems.
AI Governance and Democracy
Contemporary AI markets often present three central promises: productivity, precision, and credibility. As a technological innovation, AI represents an extension of human capability and presents a unique opportunity to shape how people live, work, and govern in the coming era.
As AI becomes embedded within society, new forms of oversight, accountability, and democratic scrutiny will be necessary to ensure that technological development remains aligned with the public interest. Amidst culture wars, political polarisation, and competing claims to truth, effective AI regulation becomes increasingly difficult and risks faltering.
Corporate influence, systemic bias, racialised power structures, data governance, and environmental impacts remain among the principal ethical and safety concerns surrounding AI. Questions regarding data collection, storage, ownership, and the environmental costs of data centres continue to shape public and political debate.
Amid AI bubbles and apprehension surrounding AI and democratic engagement—how we use, regulate, and debate these technologies—will become an increasingly important part of our relationship with technological change.
Beyond its technical capability, AI has reignited longstanding philosophical debates concerning reason, truth, intelligence, knowledge, and human judgement. Raising broader questions about how people form beliefs, make ethical decisions, and understand the world. From an ethical perspective, AI can be understood alongside other systems of production and consumption that raise questions concerning responsibility, exploitation, and social harm. In this sense, debates surrounding AI are not entirely new but reflect broader moral questions already present in discussions of industries such as fast fashion, industrial agriculture, and global supply chains.
AI and Work
An example of AI reshaping work can be seen in the climate sector, where AI has been proposed as a practical tool for supporting the green transition through new forms of environmental analysis and decision-making. AI is also being used within healthcare, where clinicians and surgeons use AI-assisted technologies to support diagnosis and certain medical procedures.
From an economic and socio-democratic perspective, the impact of AI on employment remains a significant concern. The question is not only what tasks can be automated, but how technological change will reshape work, responsibility, and opportunity throughout society.
As AI expands across different sectors, the development and adoption of AI may disproportionately affect clerical and office-based roles, particularly administrative and analytical positions, potentially resulting in reduced hiring in some occupations. This may contribute to changes in class relations, labour markets, and employment patterns, while creating new forms of competition and raising questions about how age, access, inequality, and opportunity shape who benefits from these changes. Certain professions may decline while others grow, potentially increasing demand for entrepreneurial and creative forms of work alongside more traditional employment.
The central challenge, therefore, is not simply job losses or job creation, but how societies, businesses, and governments manage the consequences of this technological transition.
AI and Social Media
The central question is not whether AI is intelligent, but whether our tools can be aligned with the kinds of relationships, institutions, and public practices through which human beings remain capable of governing themselves. Our capacity for judgement, responsibility, and collective self-governance are key qualities that remain sovereign in our relationship with technology.
So, as AI assists when life becomes complex, many of the challenges facing society—inequality, loneliness, political division, environmental degradation, and questions of meaning—exist beyond the technology itself. The success of AI will therefore not be determined solely by its technical capabilities, but by how humans choose to manoeuvre within the demands of the forces that either uphold or diminish AI success and/or societal growth. AI prompts concerns about wellbeing, social relationships, and mental health, echoing earlier debates surrounding social media platforms such as Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). Yet before giving way to narratives of technological panic, it is important to situate AI within a longer history of human interaction with technology. From the telephone and the television to the internet revolution and social media, societies have repeatedly grappled with the opportunities and risks associated with new forms of communication and technological innovation. Likewise, concerns surrounding computer hacking, cybercrime, and digital security are not entirely new phenomena, but part of an ongoing process of technological adaptation and governance.
AI, Sovereignty and Power
Human sovereignty rests not only in technological capability, but in our capacity to deliberate, negotiate, and govern ourselves. This extends to the ways in which energy, security, trade, and political decision-making are organised and contested.
Control over data, computing infrastructure, energy resources, and technological expertise increasingly shapes national power. As AI becomes more important to economic and political life, questions of sovereignty are no longer confined to territorial borders alone but extend to the governance of digital infrastructure and information systems. While states remain the primary actors in this process, international cooperation through organisations such as NATO and the European Union is becoming increasingly important. AI is reconfigured through traditional understandings of security, economic power, and political sovereignty.
The concept of sovereign AI concerns the ability of states to preserve autonomy in AI policy choices and avoid excessive dependence on external actors. As AI systems become embedded within economic, administrative, and security structures, technological dependence may increasingly translate into political dependence. This concern is reflected in recent policy discussions that define sovereign AI in terms of maintaining national autonomy while navigating growing reliance on foreign technologies and AI infrastructure.
As AI continues to develop, societies face both new and familiar political questions concerning governance, accountability, and public interest. While the technologies themselves may be novel, debates surrounding power, legitimacy, and collective decision-making remain longstanding features of political life.
AI forms part of humanity's ongoing relationship with technological innovation and therefore requires continual negotiation. Public debate, activism, regulation, and democratic scrutiny will continue to shape its development. The future of AI will depend not only on technological acceleration, but also on the choices societies make regarding adaptation, restraint, and governance.
AI, Culture and Values
Historically, progress has often been associated with our proximity to the machine, rewarding greater speed, efficiency, productivity, and technical capability. As a result, AI is not simply a tool, but a reflection of broader aspirations towards knowledge, power, and advancement.
The development of AI has taken place largely within capitalist societies and institutions historically influenced by patriarchal structures. As an onset, AI embodies a cultural mixture and preference for problem-solving, analytics, and goal-orientation. Albeit values which are historically coded as masculine features, thus raising important questions about which forms of knowledge and human experience receive recognition.
In ‘Technofeminism’, sociologist Judy Wajcman (2004) argued that technologies do not emerge independently of society but are shaped by the institutions, values, and power structures that produce them.
Similarly, Carol Gilligan's (1982) work on the ethics of care reminds us that moral reasoning extends beyond abstract rationality to include relationships, responsibility, and care for others.
As AI becomes increasingly influential in how we work, communicate, and make decisions, attention must be paid to how existing social structures shape its development and long-term effects.
We should ask whether qualities such as empathy, emotional intelligence, and holistic perception are afforded equal value within technological cultures and society as a whole and if not, why is that? And whether or not one accepts the distinction between masculine and feminine modes of thinking—the broader question remains significant.
If societies increasingly reward what can be measured, quantified, and optimised, what becomes of the human qualities that are less easily captured by data alone? AI is not only a technological development, but a lens to examine societal questions regarding gender, culture, and democracy, as well as the kinds of values we wish or are conditioned to carry into the future.
Conclusion
AI places societies at a significant turning point whereby its development is generating competing political, economic, and ethical interpretations of the future. Therefore, humanity's relationship with technology requires continual negotiation between what machines can do and what human beings choose to value. Today, AI is not merely a question of technology, nor simply a question of intelligence, but whether our tools can be aligned with the kinds of relationships, institutions, and public practices through which human beings remain capable of judgement and self-governance, both individually and collectively.
AI develops within systems shaped by capitalism and influenced by patriarchal and racialised power structures; consequently, its political and democratic consequences will become increasingly significant across fields ranging from social economics to sovereign security. In Arendt’s exploration of freedom, she says this is dependent not merely upon technical capability but upon the human capacity to act, judge, and deliberate together in public life. In preserving agency, accountability, and human flourishing, one of the central questions of AI lies not in what the technology can do, but in what societies—and those in power—choose to do with it.
Written by Malaika Fallah
Malaika Fallah is a writer at the intersection of politics, philosophy, and culture. Her work explores identity, belonging, and power through the lenses of geography, queer theory, and lived experience.
