The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future

by Mustafa Suleyman

On one trajectory, some liberal democratic states will continue to be eroded from within, becoming a kind of zombie government. Trappings of liberal democracy and the traditional nation-state remain, but functionally they are hollowed out, the core services increasingly threadbare, the polity unstable and fractious. Lurching on in the absence of anything else, they become ever more degraded and dysfunctional. On another, unthinking adoption of some aspects of the coming wave opens pathways to domineering state control, creating supercharged Leviathans whose power goes beyond even history’s most extreme totalitarian governments. Authoritarian regimes may also tend toward zombie status, but equally they may double down, get boosted, become fully fledged techno-dictatorships. On either path, the delicate balance holding states together is tipped into chaos. Both failing states and authoritarian regimes are disastrous outcomes, not just on their own terms, but also for governing technology; neither flailing bureaucracies, populist opportunists, nor all-powerful dictators are people you’d want to be