The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future

by Mustafa Suleyman

Looking at our vast cities, the sturdy civic buildings built of steel and stone, the great chains of roads and rails stitching them all together, the immense landscaping and engineering works that manage their environments, there’s a tempting sense of permanence exuded by our society. Despite the weightlessness of the digital world, there’s a solidness and a profusion to the material world around us. It shapes our everyday expectations. We go to the supermarket and expect it to be stuffed with fresh fruits and vegetables. We expect it to be kept cool in the summer, warm in the winter. Even despite constant turbulence, we assume that the supply chains and affordances of the twenty-first century are as robust as an old town hall. All the most historically extreme parts of our existence appear utterly banal, and so for the most part we carry on our lives as if they can go on indefinitely. Most of those around us, up to and including our leaders, do the same. And yet, nothing lasts forever. Throughout history societal collapses are legion: from ancient Mesopotamia to Rome, the Maya to Easter Island, again and again it’s not just that civilizations don’t last; it’s that unsustainability appears baked in. Civilizations that collapse are not the exception; they are the rule. A survey of sixty civilizations suggests they last about four hundred years on average before falling apart. Without new technologies, they hit hard limits to development—in available energy, in food, in soci...

The Illusion of Permanence: Technology’s Temporary Reprieve from Collapse