I have been thinking a great deal about the state of modern society, and the more I observe what is unfolding across the developed world, the less convinced I become by the explanations that dominate our public discourse. Every event arrives neatly packaged with its own causes, villains and remedies. Brexit is explained through nationalism. Civil unrest in France through immigration. Political polarisation through social media. Economic anxiety through globalisation. The rise of populist movements through inequality. Artificial intelligence through technological disruption. Each explanation captures something true, yet none of them feels sufficient. We have become remarkably skilled at identifying symptoms. I am no longer sure we have spent enough time asking whether those symptoms point towards a deeper condition.
When Britain voted to leave the European Union, the debate quickly divided into familiar camps. One side viewed the vote as an act of liberation. The other regarded it as an act of self-harm. Yet neither explanation seemed capable of capturing what many people were actually experiencing. Beneath the arguments about sovereignty, regulation and trade sat a more profound feeling. Increasing numbers of people felt disconnected from the institutions and systems shaping their lives. Whether that feeling was justified in every case is almost beside the point. Politics is often driven less by objective reality than by the reality people experience emotionally. Many citizens felt that power had become distant, abstract and difficult to influence. Brexit was, at least in part, an attempt to reclaim a sense of agency.
What followed was perhaps even more revealing than the referendum itself. Britain discovered that leaving a system is not the same as creating a new one. The promise of clarity often gave way to further complexity. Political rhetoric frequently substituted for long-term vision. Existing frustrations did not disappear. New ones emerged. Looking back, it seems that Brexit was not simply a dispute about Europe. It was an expression of a wider unease, one that extends far beyond Britain and can be observed in different forms across much of the developed world.
For decades, people were told that progress was occurring all around them. Financial markets recovered from crises. Technological advances transformed industries. Wealth creation accelerated. Entire sectors of the economy flourished. Yet many households struggled to recognise themselves within this narrative of progress. Housing became less affordable. Economic security felt more fragile. Public institutions grew more bureaucratic. Daily life often felt more burdensome rather than less. This disconnect may not be fully captured by statistics, but it is visible in public sentiment. The economy appeared increasingly successful while large numbers of people felt increasingly uncertain about their own place within it.
At the same time, the systems governing modern life became extraordinarily complex. This complexity did not emerge because people set out to create confusion. In most cases, it arose from attempts to solve legitimate problems. Regulations were introduced to address previous failures. Financial systems evolved to improve efficiency. Governments expanded programmes to manage increasingly sophisticated societies. Technology connected people across the planet. Yet there is a difference between sophistication and accessibility. A system can become more advanced while becoming less comprehensible. It can become more capable while feeling more distant.
There is an obvious objection to this argument. Human beings have confronted complexity before. The Industrial Revolution transformed economies, communities and ways of life. Millions of people found themselves living in realities their grandparents would barely recognise. Factories replaced traditional trades. Railways altered perceptions of distance. Vast cities emerged almost overnight. At the time, many feared that society itself was becoming too large and too complicated to understand. Yet civilisation did not collapse. People adapted. New institutions emerged. Educational systems expanded. Political participation widened. Entire cultures evolved to help people understand the new reality.
This historical perspective forces an important refinement. Perhaps complexity itself is not the problem. Human beings have repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to adapt. The question is whether societies are creating the institutions, narratives and forms of participation necessary to help people locate themselves within periods of rapid change. Industrialisation did not succeed merely because new technologies appeared. It succeeded because political, cultural and social structures gradually emerged alongside those technologies. People found a place for themselves within the new world.
Another challenge to my argument is equally important. Most people do not understand the systems they rely upon every day. They do not understand how aircraft fly, how modern medicine functions or how information travels across global digital networks. Yet they use these systems without feeling alienated by them. This suggests that comprehension alone cannot be the issue. Human beings do not require expert knowledge of everything around them. Civilisation would be impossible if they did.
What people may require instead is legitimacy. They may not understand every detail of modern medicine, but they understand why hospitals exist. They may not understand the engineering behind aviation, but they understand its purpose. The problem emerges when individuals no longer understand how important decisions affecting their lives are made and simultaneously cease to feel represented within those processes. The issue is not ignorance. The issue is participation.
This distinction becomes increasingly important the more I think about it. Perhaps I have been too focused on complexity when the deeper issue concerns significance. After all, people can tolerate astonishing levels of complexity when they feel valued and included. A scientist contributes to a field too vast for any one person to fully comprehend. A doctor practises within a healthcare system far larger than their individual expertise. Yet neither necessarily feels alienated. They feel connected because they experience themselves as participants in a larger endeavour.
This raises a more troubling possibility. The growing anxiety visible across many developed societies may not stem primarily from complexity. It may stem from the feeling that increasing numbers of people no longer play a meaningful role in shaping the future around them. They experience themselves less as participants and more as spectators. Decisions appear to emerge from distant institutions, complex systems, global markets and technological processes over which they possess little influence. The world does not merely feel complicated. It feels authored elsewhere.
Viewed through this lens, many contemporary debates look different. Brexit becomes more than a dispute about Europe. Civil unrest becomes more than an argument about immigration. Political polarisation becomes more than a conflict between left and right. These events may be expressions of a deeper concern: the fear of becoming irrelevant within one’s own society. The search for understanding gradually becomes a search for someone to blame. People point towards immigrants, elites, politicians, corporations, technology or globalisation. The targets vary, but the underlying anxiety often feels remarkably similar.
This brings us to artificial intelligence. Much of the current discussion focuses on jobs, productivity and economic competitiveness. These are important questions, but they may not be the most important ones. My concern is not that machines become more intelligent than people. Human beings have always created tools that exceed individual human capabilities in specific domains. My concern is that AI arrives in a society already struggling with questions of agency, meaning and participation.
Advocates of AI often make a compelling argument. They point out that technology frequently hides complexity rather than exposing it. Most people do not understand how internet infrastructure operates, yet digital technologies make life simpler rather than more complicated. AI could potentially do the same. It may help people navigate healthcare systems, legal systems, taxation and administration more easily. It could remove friction from everyday life and make complex institutions more accessible.
I hope they are right. Yet even if they are, another question remains. If AI increasingly performs the cognitive tasks that once gave people economic value and social significance, how will societies ensure that individuals continue to feel necessary? The challenge may not be technological at all. The challenge may be existential. Human beings need more than efficiency. They need purpose. They need belonging. They need a sense that their actions matter and that they possess some degree of authorship over the future.
This is why I worry that public debates about artificial intelligence often focus too narrowly on economics. Wealth creation alone has never been sufficient to sustain social cohesion. Prosperity matters, but meaning matters as well. Throughout history, people have endured extraordinary hardship when they believed they were part of something larger than themselves. Conversely, societies can become unstable even amid material abundance if large numbers of people feel disconnected, purposeless or invisible.
Perhaps the central challenge of the twenty-first century therefore has less to do with artificial intelligence than with humanity itself. The question is not whether machines will become more capable. They almost certainly will. The question is whether human beings will continue to feel that they have a meaningful place within the world those machines help create. Can we build institutions that preserve participation? Can we create economic systems that recognise human dignity? Can we ensure that technological progress remains connected to human flourishing rather than becoming detached from it?
These are not arguments against progress. Nor are they arguments against technology. History suggests that retreat is neither possible nor desirable. The future will continue to arrive, regardless of our comfort with it. The real challenge is ensuring that progress remains recognisably human. A civilisation should not be judged solely by the sophistication of its systems, the power of its technologies or the size of its economy. It should also be judged by whether ordinary people can still see themselves reflected in the future being created around them.
The more I consider these questions, the less convinced I become that our greatest danger lies in technological failure. The greater danger may be that we succeed technologically while failing socially. We may build increasingly intelligent systems while neglecting the conditions that enable human beings to feel connected, valued and involved. We may create extraordinary capabilities while inadvertently weakening the relationships that hold societies together.
History teaches us that civilisations rarely fail because they lack intelligence. More often, they begin to fracture when enough people lose their sense of belonging. Not their wealth. Not their comfort. Their belonging. They cease to believe that the future belongs to them, that their contributions matter, or that their voices carry weight. Once that erosion begins, social cohesion becomes fragile.
The question that stays with me is therefore not whether artificial intelligence will transform society. It undoubtedly will. The more important question is whether, amid all this transformation, we can preserve something essential: the belief that ordinary human beings are not merely subjects of the future, but authors of it. Because if we lose that, no level of technological achievement will be enough to compensate for what has been lost.
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