With the release of OpenAI’s Chat GPT-5, artificial intelligence has vaulted forward again. But this is no ordinary tech update. With each new development in this technology, America and the world edge closer to something resembling a world-historical revolution.
Technological and economic shifts have always marched hand in hand, but this wave of automation threatens to upend labor markets like never before, creating what historian Yuval Noah Harari chillingly calls a “useless class.” And in a nation already fractured and struggling to find its shared identity, it would be insane to think of such a transformation without acknowledging that it risks igniting unrest on a scale far beyond mere economic anxiety. Policymakers must stop treating AI as a purely economic—or geopolitical—matter. They must treat it as a question of national survival.
Throughout history, as Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne remind us, “technological progress has vastly shifted the composition of employment.” John Maynard Keynes famously cautioned that the pain from these changes “often springs not from the rheumatics of old age, but from the growing-pains of over-rapid changes.” Both observations may ring true today—but this rupture is unlike any before. Previous industrial revolutions only rendered certain forms of human labor obsolete. Displaced workers could find new trades. But now, the trades themselves may vanish.
The impact of such a development would go beyond the paycheck. It would affect work in a more profound way—its role as a stake in society, a source of dignity and community. When labor markets collapse, it’s not just incomes that fall. It’s trust, civic engagement, and the very sense of belonging. In a society where social trust is fraying and depression deepens, the economist’s instinct to “leave it to the market” grows perilous. High-trust societies can absorb shocks and rebuild; America, however, is no longer one of them.
Stable work ties people to their communities, sustaining civic life and a sense of shared purpose. Today, amid a deepening crisis of despair—with life expectancy for working-class Americans falling and suicide rates climbing 36 percent between 1999 and 2019, as Anne Case and Angus Deaton have shown—the next great economic upheaval threatens not just to strain the social contract, but to rip it apart.
Economists like Frey are right to caution that slowing automation might hobble economic growth, and geopolitical rivalry—particularly with China—makes pressing ahead all the more urgent. Yet nationhood itself must not be forgotten, and innovation is not the only priority. It needs to take place within the bounds of civic cohesion. To raise such concerns is not to be backward-looking but prudent. The question we face is whether America can prepare for a future where technology shapes not just its economy, but the very structures that underpin politics and community.
America is not simply, as the economist Daron Acemoglu warns, “sleepwalking into an economic storm”—it is careening into a political tempest. Technology is never neutral. Technologies like the printing press—a transformative force in the structure of politics and society—did not merely change how information was spread; they helped create the very political orders we live under today. The Industrial Revolution, likewise, sowed the seeds of Marxist and other ideological movements by dramatically reshaping work and society. Similarly, AI will not just disrupt jobs; it will shape the architecture of governance, influence power dynamics, and redefine what citizenship means.
If we refuse to engage politically with AI, we risk allowing the technology to dictate terms rather than negotiate them. Our laws, institutions, and norms will be left scrambling to catch up with runaway algorithms and automated decision-making systems. The result could be a hollowing out of democratic control, with profound implications for our constitutional order.
We must begin imagining remedies now, even if it is not yet time to implement them: taxing the enormous profits automation generates to support pro-nationhood policies; regulating to slow down automation where it hollows out significant employment; and allowing states to experiment with policies under the watchful eye of federalism, learning from successes and failures alike.
Yet even before we debate cures, we must first agree on the diagnosis. We need a national conversation that treats AI not just as a set of tools or economic variables, but as a force capable of reshaping the social contract itself. We must reckon with the fact that innovation in technology demands innovation in governance.
In Silicon Valley, the motto is “move fast and break things.” But in the polity, where human lives and liberties are at stake, such mindset will not do. To navigate the AI revolution wisely, we must slow down just enough to think deeply, govern intentionally, and ensure that machines enhance, rather than diminish, our national purpose. The future is not written in code alone.