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The social side effects of the AI revolution

AI is changing everything right now.
And we're barely talking about it.

AI researches, writes, codes, analyzes. For a lot of people that has been everyday life for a while now, and for me too. I use it every day, intensively. Not as a toy, but as a tool for thinking, structuring, getting things done. I think it's great.

And that is exactly why I notice what is shifting: work, income, taxes, education, the public sphere, responsibility, power. So much of what we treat as a given rests on assumptions that are starting to give way. We need to talk.

Work

"That only affects IT." No. It affects everything that gets decided at a computer.

AI doesn't replace an industry. It replaces tasks. And most of them sit outside IT.

We need to talk about this.
Work

AI doesn't only replace jobs. It also stops new ones from being created.

One of those makes headlines. The other doesn't.

We need to talk about this.
Money & State

The pension system assumes that younger workers will pay today's pensions. AI assumes we need fewer younger workers.

The demographics are hard enough on their own. Now a second calculation is being added, and it is missing from the public debate.

We need to talk about this.
Public Sphere

Millions of people ask a machine every day what is true. The machine always answers.

We rely on systems whose answers sound plausible. Whether they are right or not, almost no one checks.

We need to talk about this.
Public Sphere

Talking to a human becomes a paid extra.

The bot handles the standard request. If you want a person, you pay more.

We need to talk about this.
The Future

The Industrial Revolution did bring prosperity in the end. The first three generations never saw it.

Whether AI makes the world better in the end isn't the real question. The real one is what happens to us in the meantime. And whether we'll still be around for the better part.

We need to talk about this.
Work

Stop hiring juniors today, and in ten years you have no seniors left.

AI replaces beginner work. But careers don't start in the middle.

We need to talk about this.
Money & State

An AI agent costs less than a skilled worker. For the welfare state, it is a total write-off.

What companies save is what the public loses.

We need to talk about this.
Money & State

A robot tax is a good idea. It only works if all of Europe joins in.

Anyone who wants a robot tax also wants a stronger Europe. The two come together.

We need to talk about this.
Public Sphere

AI learns from what was. It cannot help but extend yesterday's world into tomorrow.

Prejudice, old power structures, blind spots. Whatever sits in the training data comes back as the answer.

We need to talk about this.
Power

Never before has the thinking of so many people hung on so few companies. And almost all of them are based in the US.

In June 2026, an order from Washington forced an AI model to be shut down worldwide, three days after its launch. Europe could only watch, and whether it comes back, nobody knows.

We need to talk about this.
Work

Retraining was never the answer. It only sounds like one.

The arithmetic fails on sheer numbers: the jobs everyone is supposed to move into can absorb only a fraction of them.

We need to talk about this.
Money & State

For 40 years, productivity and wages have stopped rising in step. AI will widen that gap further.

When productivity gains flow into software instead of labour, they don't flow into wages either.

We need to talk about this.
The Future

A basic income solves the money question. It does not solve the question of why you get up in the morning.

UBI secures a living and props up consumer demand. It does not replace what paid work also delivers: status, a daily structure, the feeling of being needed.

We need to talk about this.
Public Sphere

AI is trained to please. A whole generation is learning that disagreement is rude.

If you only ever talk to systems that agree with you, you forget how to be corrected.

We need to talk about this.
Power

Europe would love its own OpenAI. But in AI, the winner is whoever can compute the most, not whoever has the best ideas.

More compute means a more capable model. The hardware and the capital for it sit concentrated in the US, in the middle of a memory shortage. Catching up isn't a question of will, it's a question of volume.

We need to talk about this.
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