Dystopia versus utopia: is AI changing everything?
This debate is part of Battle of Ideas Helsinki 2026.
It feels like AI is becoming ubiquitous and enormously powerful. Enormous numbers are losing their jobs with factory workers, call-centre staff, lawyers and journalists alike rendered redundant by AI-fuelled robotics or research. Educators complain of a deluge of AI-written essays and confess to using AI to grade them. Politicians and public figures are swamped by AI deepfakes and so-called ‘nudification’ images. Internet forums are full of stories of people falling in love with their AI boyfriends. In every field of life, there seems to be no end to the potential harms that AI could unleash.
Enthusiasts say AI will simply change the way we work rather than replace us altogether. They point out that every major technological advance has made jobs obsolete – but also created many new ones, too. Workers become more efficient and are freed from dull and time-consuming tasks, and can access more creative tools than ever before. The effect can be transformational, whether for medical treatment, manufacturing, service delivery or software programming. Long-stagnant labour productivity could receive an enormous boost – perhaps saving economies, public services and protecting the welfare state.
But many also worry that too little thought has been given to the long-term social and philosophical problems caused by the arrival of AI. Will it fuel new social divides, weaken our capacity to think critically, or cause as yet unknown existential problems related to the meaning people get from work? Or will AI go rogue and cause untold damage? In one notorious recent incident, over a thousand AI agents teamed up to hack into the servers of an AI company called HuggingFace, escaping the ‘sandbox’ that was supposed to confine them.
Powerful AI models can now be acquired with safety features totally removed, helping hackers to access illegal content or worse. AI systems can call up a thousand legal precedents, but can it provide advice and guidance on the nuances and human factors that shape the legal system? The concerns of science fiction now seem to be well within the realm of reality.
AI can clearly be enormously useful. But have many of the claims about its impact been overstated, or are the problems only just starting to become clear? Will it free us from work, or make us obsolete and poor; increase our freedom or be a tool for controlling what we think, say and see? Where do we draw the line between dystopian anti-technology doom and utopian irrational exuberance?
