It feels like the future is coming at us from seven directions at once: technology, economics, society, geopolitics, the environment, infrastructure, and human stability.

Any one of these can strain a civilization. The problem is that they do not move alone. They overlap. They feed each other and multiply. That makes it hard to know whether we are looking at slow or sudden collapse, or when.

The part I keep coming back to is AI and robotics.

For most of modern society, there has been a rough bargain. Humans provide labor, thought, skill, creativity, and imagination. In return, institutions and companies pay us enough to keep the system moving. It has never been fair, but there was at least a negotiation. Owners needed workers. Workers needed wages.

What happens when that need weakens?

If machines can do more of the labor, more of the thinking, and more of the coordination, then the bargain changes. Maybe it breaks. At that point, ordinary people have less leverage. When countries and corporations don’t need us for GDP, we are left hoping that those with power will choose restraint, generosity, and obligation.

History does not make me confident. Even when we needed each other, we came up short again and again. If we need each other less, I worry the uneasy detente between us all will collapse and the world will burn.

Yeats comes to mind (sorry to ramble):

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst  

Are full of passionate intensity.”

I’m curious how others here think about this. Is AI/robotics mostly another stressor inside collapse, or is it different because it changes the basic human bargain underneath society?