The Dispensable Human

We have never been here before. Analogies to industrialization, electrification or the internet are fine and well, but never have so many different forms of knowledge work been threatened at the same time at such scale. Once upon a time, the relative scarcity of the very forms of highly skilled labour now most threatened by artificial intelligence created the heart of the middle class as we know it. If the forces accelerating income inequality before AI amounted to a Category 1 hurricane, now the storm is Category 3 or 4, and we’re quickly headed to Category 5. The Dispensable Human makes vivid the profound impact of AI on the so-called professional class, and on the world of labour as a whole.

Leading political scientist Yascha Mounk takes us to the front lines of institutional transformation and the cutting of edge of robotics, showing us the revolutionary impact we now face. With characteristic depth of field, he brings into focus our hard-won political freedoms have become imperilled, and how democracy itself is weakened by the weakening of the middle class. He shows us how AI further erodes the the substrate that supports liberty by stoking cynicism, diminishing confidence in a shared truth, and giving despots unprecedented tools for surveillance and social control. Further, just as entry into the highest status professional vocations has become a source of identity and community, the path to that charmed circle is radically narrowing. The result will be many more frustrated aspirants and a potential wholesale collapse in civilizational morale.

But this dire vision is not inevitable. The Dispensable Human offers clear-eyed prescriptions to avoid the worse-case outcomes. They all will require hard choices, and considerable collective will; nothing about this is going to be easy. But whatever your perspective on the politics, this book makes an irrefutable case that denial is not a very clever option.