Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere in 2025. Are we in an AI wonderland now? Will AI be a magic solution to make the world better for everyone? Many, enchanted with it, think so. Others are skeptical of its magic. The time has come for humanity to reflect before it is too late, on where the world is headed and whether we want to go where AI is taking us. We must ask some fundamental questions about who we are, whether artificial intelligence is real intelligence, and what we aspire for.
“India has become an aspirational society” is a popular description of the outcome of India’s ‘liberal economic’ reforms in 1991, under pressure, it must be remembered, of the liberal markets’ ideology of the Washington Consensus.
A report in the Times of India on January 3, 2025 says:
“Rich live in different times, luxe watches fly off shelves.”
“Sales of smart watches may be struggling, but luxury watches are seeing record demand, not just in the metro markets but also in tier-2 and tier-3 cities.
Most luxury watch brands, whose prices start from a few lakhs of rupees and top the crore mark, have seen sales in India grow substantially in 2024..”
“The growth reflects a broader trend of aspirational consumption in India, with more people keen to experience luxury brands”, says the CEO of a chain of luxury watch boutiques.”
Are policymakers hallucinating when they imagine India has become an aspirational society? Are all Indians keen to experience luxury? And, if all want it, can they afford it? Who has become aspirational? What are they aspiring for? Are their aspirations being fulfilled?
Artificial intelligence is not the solution. Since powerful and autonomous AI agents will not need instructions from human beings, let us imagine what problems they will be inclined to use their power to solve.
A fear is that AI will reduce the need for human work, and reduce the numbers of jobs and reduce incomes. Tech enthusiasts and economists say, don’t worry. There will be new jobs in the green economy; also, jobs to provide for increasing needs for care as populations age. They have hopes that since humans have not found good solutions for complex problems of economic inequity, climate change, and societal dystrophy, artificial intelligence is our saviour. But let’s pause and think before we outsource our future to AI.
Some questions economic reformers must find answers to are:
- How will the economy grow if citizens earn less and have less incomes to pay for services?
- Who will pay the businesses who provide the new AI-powered solutions?
More technology and more AI alone cannot provide answers to these questions. There are ethical questions too about the purpose of business institutions and the uses of technology.
Will AI agents care about climate change? Biological life on Earth is sustained by simple molecules: H2O (water) to nourish; O2 (oxygen) to breathe. AI agents are biologically disembodied beings. They do not need water and oxygen to live. Why would they care if the Earth is running out of water and the atmosphere is becoming choked with carbon?
Needs for caregiving are growing in rich and poor countries, with ageing populations, distress caused by war and disease, and mental health problems caused by an increasing societal dystrophy. Economists and technologists say these needs are an opportunity to increase the size of the caregiving economy.
In addition to the problem of who will pay for the solutions provided to citizens, there are other questions: Can AI agents with no human feelings care about the feelings of human beings? What will be the quality of the relationship between AI caregivers and human beings they assist?
2024 was a low point in global governance. Institutions for global cooperation have broken down. COPs for arresting climate change are ineffectual. The WTO is on its deathbed. The UN is in limbo. Forecasters predict that the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which were to be achieved by 2030, will not be attainable even by 2087 if we carry on solving problems the way we are.
Perhaps the only hope for humanity, some hallucinate, is that AI will take over global governance before too late and solve problems we are unwilling to cooperate and solve. But consider, who is developing these intelligent agents, and who controls them: Alphabet/Google, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft/Open AI, Apple in the US; Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Ping An in China. Large, privately owned, tech empires.
Yanis Varoufakis calls them ‘cloudalist conglomerates’ in his book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, his insightful analysis of the global political economy. Look behind the screen, who controls these conglomerates that have made us data-serfs, providing them the data they need, voluntarily and for free, to train their intelligent agents that control our minds?
Boundary between private and public
Systems for collective governance of economic, social, and political systems are being torn by political power conflicts to establish the inviolable boundary between the private and the public; between ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’; between what belongs to an individual and what must belong to the public; between what is permissible to be used for selfish, personal gain and what must be used for the general, public good.
Two levels of technology controllers are manipulating humans in the 21stcentury, making us into willing puppets. At one level are autonomous agents who now take decisions for us in various domains of our lives – shopping, education, health, finance, etc. Controlling them are investors and owners of the tech platforms and AI applications they deploy that are pervading our lives. These feudal, technology empires compete for more profit and more power, and become more powerful. Common citizens are becoming powerless.
India’s, and the world’s, 21st century existential problems need political consensus, not technological fixes. Let’s listen with empathy to other humans in 2025. Let our minds not be manipulated by AI algorithms.
Arun Maira is a former member of the Planning Commission and former chairman of BCG India. He is the author of Transforming Systems: Why the World Needs a New, Ethical Tool-kit and Listening for Well-Being: Conversations with People Not Like Us.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
