Political risk experts evaluate the effects of the AI boom: less work means more space for oneself. The stability of states, however, is in danger
The spread of artificial intelligence is attracting the attention of political risk experts. In addition to numerous other aspects, the impact on the social stability of states is important. Indeed, artificial intelligence risks creating a society deeply divided between a narrow elite that controls technology and an impoverished and atomized majority, narcotized by digital platforms designed to maintain social peace through distraction.
The promise that AI could usher in an era of greater leisure for humanity is not new in economic history. As historian Benjamin Hunnicutt explains in his book Free time: the forgotten american dream, already in the nineteenth century working hours in industrialized nations progressively decreased with the enrichment of economies. The increase in free time was already considered one of the great blessings of technology according to Hunnicutt himself. In the United Kingdom today, workers spend about half the hours per week at work that their counterparts in the mid-19th century spent in factories.
Some economists say they believe workers will “cash” those profits in the form of extra free time rather than higher incomes. Please note: a different distribution of work and free time is not a given. Having a digital golem working for you doesn’t mean you’ll spend your time doing yoga or traveling, or focusing on spirituality. The topic is not trivial, and the risk is of slipping into the same suggestions that characterized the initial phase of the 5 Star Movement in Italy. Take the United States, which is the country with the highest wages but also the one where people with the highest salaries tend to work the most. More than 40 percent of Americans who accrue paid leave don’t use it fully, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
Carlo Pelanda, in an essay from a few years ago entitled Futurization, indicated the risk of the Tower of Babel, that is, the atomization of societies, with the creation of myriads of micro identities and small groups that escape the single collective identity and create a soup of chaos. Pelanda’s vision captures a fundamental dynamic of the digital age: social fragmentation accelerated by information technologies. Recent research documents how the formation of micro-identities represents a paradoxical dynamic, capable of both intensifying polarization and eroding democratic norms and, conversely, strengthening them when strategically integrated into coalition-building efforts. The consequence is a society increasingly fragmented into identity micro-groups that communicate mainly within their own information bubbles, making dialogue and the construction of a shared collective identity – the community of destiny – necessary for social cohesion impossible.
The dichotomy between productivity growth and distribution of its benefits constitutes the crux of the social challenge posed by AI. Technology promises abundance but at the same time threatens to dramatically accentuate social polarization, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. If this trend were to be confirmed, there would be a red alert: the greater inequality would create cyclical destabilizations and would force governments to have to resort to instruments of social peace.
On the one hand, the use of fiscal instruments, such as citizens’ incomes, are difficult to sustain in terms of public finances, while the old “opium of the people”, i.e. traditional religions, seems insufficient to cushion the impact of AI externalities. On the other hand, we can already see an overabundant use of forms of digital narcosis devised in China. TikTok represents the best-known emblem of this strategy, which has long earned it a gloomy nickname: that of “digital fentanyl”.
