One of the things that has surprised me most over the past year is how rarely my conversations with futurists actually stay focused on artificial intelligence. We usually begin there. We talk about generative models, autonomous agents, the next version of ChatGPT, the speed at which these systems are evolving.
Yet after twenty or thirty minutes, AI almost disappears from the conversation. We find ourselves talking instead about labor markets, education, political institutions, governance and, eventually, something much larger than technology itself: the possibility that we are approaching the end of an economic model that has shaped modern societies for generations.
That shift in perspective has been difficult to ignore. We often compare AI to the internet or smartphones because it makes the transformation easier to understand. Those technologies undoubtedly changed our lives. But they never challenged one of the central assumptions underpinning modern economies: that human labor is the primary engine through which value is created and wealth is distributed.
Artificial intelligence might. Brett King during an interview with The Astana Times correspondent Aida Haidar. Photo credit: The Astana Times During one of our interviews, futurist Brett King made an observation that has stayed with me ever since. The more automation we introduce into the economy, he said, the less the traditional mechanics of capitalism function in the way they were originally designed.
As he put it, it will be the end of capitalism as we know it. Whether or not one agrees with his conclusion is almost secondary. The more interesting question is what governments should do if he is even partially right. Because history suggests that institutions rarely have the luxury of waiting until structural change is complete before deciding how to respond.
By then, the transition is usually far more painful than it needed to be. Perhaps this is why I have gradually become less interested in AI itself and more interested in leadership. Not political leadership in the conventional sense, but the ability of governments to think beyond immediate political cycles and prepare societies for an economy that does not yet fully exist.
Brett challenged another assumption that many of us have taken for granted over the last four decades: that markets, left largely to themselves, will eventually solve most problems. “The free market hasn’t solved climate change. The free market hasn’t solved poverty.
It hasn’t solved homelessness. This is not something that the free market is going to solve. This is a function of coordinated governance,” he told me. It is a provocative argument, particularly at a time when governments around the world are still trying to determine how much they should regulate artificial intelligence and how much they should simply allow innovation to unfold.
Yet there is something compelling about the distinction he makes. Artificial intelligence is not disrupting a single industry. It is beginning to influence healthcare, transportation, logistics, finance, manufacturing, education and public administration simultaneously.
Unlike previous technological revolutions, it does not fit neatly within the responsibility of one ministry or one regulator. It cuts across virtually every institution that modern states have spent decades building. If that is true, then leadership acquires a different meaning.