I have a strong memory of British historian Lisa Jardine, bitingly writing about Victorian ladies knitting socks for the poor, who were simultaneously dying on their doorstep. It registered then and has remained with me. There is something sad about people industriously helping, whilst the system remains profoundly unequal.
Jardine wrote about the Victorian age which was marked by the impact of Industrial Revolution. Every major technological revolution initially rewards those who already possess the relevant assets. In the case of the Industrial Revolution the lives of workers got a lot worse for several decades, before evening out into some form of a welfare state in most Western democracies. Yuval Harari in Sapiens wrote of a similar pattern when humanity started farming. It was a step that benefited humanity (more people could be sustained), but not necessarily humans.
We are now living in an Information Revolution. This same Yuval Harari is now saying he is probably writing his last book. Language used to be the thing that set people apart from animals as well as machines. Now we are dealing with a technology change that no longer just threatens physical labor, like the industrial revolution, but intellectual labor as well. Jack Clark, Anthropics co-founder – whilst acknowledging that nobody knows the future – suggests a human world will come to live on top of a much greater economy, in which a lot of work is outsourced to AI. The transition will likely be painful, though there will be human work left, though not necessarily for the same people that lost theirs.
The Information Revolution is one whose futures no one yet knows. We do however know the source of it – most AI technology is being developed within organisations whose primary incentives are growth, market dominance and shareholder value, rather than democratic accountability. And at this point in time those with capital, data, networks and education gain disproportionately. Those without them fall further behind. This is called the Matthew-effect (25:29), after the saying “whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them”.
The core question is then: if the world tends to greater unfairness – what can we do to turn this around? Awareness is the first step, starting the public conversation about what we think matters in the world. Not only money, or productivity, but human dignity, community and belonging. The Pope has risen to this challenge with his Magnifica Humanitas. In a world dominated by the language of power, competition and growth, he insists on the language of humanity and care. He claims the space for the many in a world that is often dominated by the few. And his voice has gained a relevancy that is surprising to many who do not necessarily share his religion.
There are many who do not share the single-minded money and power driven values that now underpin geo-politics and tech. Communities and the civil society should imagine futures that help ordinary citizens retain agency in an AI society and create institutions that reduce inequality. Co-imagining utopian futures with dystopian is part of how humanity moves forward. AI will be a game changer in how we organize society and what we see as meaningfully contributing to it.
The Industrial Revolution offers a rough template: things got worse before they got better, and they got better because people changed the system with trade unions, public education, libraries and social insurance. So how do we close the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots in this revolution? What institutions should we imagine?
1. What are the unions of the AI Age? This is so relevant for young people who as yet have few unique skills, and for older ones who cannot do their old job, but are not fit for the new ones?
2. What’s the political context for AI? Some things you want to leave to governments. But at what scale? Is the national level still relevant if half the world’s population is using these companies’ tools? Do we need governments at continental level? Europe’s values have never felt so real and meaningful.
3. How do we create the public libraries of this revolution? What is tech-for-good? Public interest AI, data governance and data cooperatives where people collectively negotiate over their data, underpinned by technologies like Solid, where people keep control over their own data.
We need to create alternative communities of contribution. In this way we might offer the possibility of acting in ways that are consistent with our values and support our hopes. And so we should co-imagine the emancipation of the many, in light of the power of the few. Let’s not stop knitting socks or tending the garden or swimming wild. But let’s do so whilst being part of a world that is less unequal. And that begins by acknowledging that it is.
June 2026