Within the sweltering summer time of AD18, a determined chant echoed throughout China’s sun-scorched plains: “Heaven has gone blind!” 1000’s of ravenous farmers, their faces smeared with ox blood, marched towards the opulent vaults held by the Han dynasty’s elite rulers.
As recorded within the historic textual content Han Shu (e-book of Han), these farmers’ calloused fingers held bamboo scrolls – historic “tweets” accusing the bureaucrats of hoarding grain whereas the farmers’ youngsters gnawed tree bark. The rise up’s firebrand warlord chief, Chong Fan, roared: “Drain the paddies!”
Inside weeks, the Crimson Eyebrows, because the protesters turned recognized, had toppled native regimes, raided granaries and – for a fleeting second – shattered the empire’s inflexible hierarchy.
The Han dynasty of China (202BC-AD220) was one of the vital developed civilisations of its time, alongside the Roman empire. Its growth of cheaper and sharper iron ploughs enabled the gathering of unprecedented harvests of grain.
However as an alternative of uplifting the farmers, this technological revolution gave rise to agrarian oligarchs who employed ever-more officers to control their increasing empire. Quickly, bureaucrats earned 30 occasions greater than these tilling the soil.
Revolutionary iron ploughs from the Han dynasty.
Windmemories through Wikimedia, CC BY-NC-SA
And when droughts struck, the farmers and their households starved whereas the empire’s elites maintained their opulence. As a well-known poem from the next Tang dynasty put it: “While meat and wine go to waste behind vermilion gates, the bones of the frozen dead lie by the roadside.”
Two millennia later, the position of know-how in rising inequality all over the world stays a serious political and societal problem. AI-driven “technology panic” – exacerbated by the disruptive efforts of Donald Trump’s new administration within the US – offers the sensation that every little thing has been upended. New tech is destroying previous certainties; populist revolt is shredding the political consensus.
And but, as we stand on the fringe of this technological cliff, seemingly peering right into a way forward for AI-induced job apocalypses, historical past whispers: “Calm down. You’ve been here before.”
The hyperlink between know-how and inequality
Expertise is humanity’s cheat code to interrupt free from shortage. The Han dynasty’s iron plough didn’t simply until soil; it doubled crop yields, enriching landlords and swelling tax coffers for emperors whereas – initially, a minimum of – leaving peasants additional behind. Equally, Britain’s steam engine didn’t simply spin cotton; it constructed coal barons and manufacturing unit slums. As we speak, AI isn’t simply automating duties; it’s creating trillion-dollar tech fiefdoms whereas destroying myriads of routine jobs.
Expertise amplifies productiveness by doing extra with much less. Over centuries, these positive factors compound, elevating financial output and rising incomes and lifespans. However every innovation reshapes who holds energy, who will get wealthy – and who will get left behind.
Because the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter warned throughout the second world battle, technological progress is rarely a benign rising tide that lifts all boats. It’s extra like a tsunami that drowns some and deposits others on golden shores, amid a course of he known as “creative destruction”.
The Kuznets curve.
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
A decade later, Russian-born US economist Simon Kuznets proposed his “inverted-U of inequality”, the Kuznets curve. For many years, this provided a reassuring narrative for residents of democratic nations searching for higher equity: inequality was an inevitable – however non permanent – value of technological progress and the financial progress that comes with it.
In recent times, nonetheless, this evaluation has been sharply questioned. Most notably, French economist Thomas Piketty, in a reappraisal of greater than three centuries of knowledge, argued in 2013 that Kuznets had been misled by historic fluke. The postwar fall in inequality he had noticed was not a basic legislation of capitalism, however a product of outstanding occasions: two world wars, financial melancholy, and large political reforms.
In regular occasions, Piketty warned, the forces of capitalism will at all times are inclined to make the wealthy richer, pushing inequality ever greater except checked by aggressive redistribution.
So, who’s appropriate? And the place does this depart us as we ponder the longer term on this newest, AI-driven industrial revolution? In truth, each Kuznets and Piketty have been working off fairly slim timeframes in fashionable human historical past. One other nation, China, affords the prospect to chart patterns of progress and inequality over a for much longer interval – on account of its historic continuity, cultural stability, and ethnic uniformity.
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In contrast to different historic civilisations such because the Egyptians and Mayans, China has maintained a unified id and distinctive language for greater than 5,000 years, permitting fashionable students to hint thousand-year-old financial information. So, with colleagues Qiang Wu and Guangyu Tong, I got down to reconcile the concepts of Kuznets and Piketty by learning technological progress and wage inequality in imperial China over 2,000 years – again past the delivery of Jesus.
To do that, we scoured China’s terribly detailed dynastic archives, together with the E book of Han (AD111) and Tang Huiyao (AD961), wherein meticulous scribes recorded the salaries of various rating officers. And here’s what we realized concerning the forces – good and unhealthy, corrupt and selfless – that almost all influenced the rise and fall of inequality in China over the previous two millennia.
Chinese language dynasties and their most influential applied sciences:
Black textual content denotes historic occasions within the west; gray textual content denotes necessary interactions between China and the west.
Peng Zhou, CC BY-NC-SA
China’s cycles of progress and inequality
One of many challenges of assessing wage inequality over 1000’s of years is that folks have been paid various things at completely different occasions – reminiscent of grain, silk, silver and even labourers.
The E book of Han information that “a governor’s annual grain salary could fill 20 oxcarts”. One other entry describes how a mid-ranking Han official’s wage included ten servants tasked solely with sharpening his ceremonial armour. Ming dynasty officers had their meagre wages supplemented with presents of silver, whereas Qing elites hid their wealth in land offers.
Map of the Han dynasty in AD2.
Yeu Ninje through Wikimedia, CC BY-NC-SA
To allow comparability over two millennia, we invented a “rice standard” – akin to the gold customary that was the idea of the worldwide financial system for a century from the 1870s. Rice is not only a staple of Chinese language diets, it has been a steady measure of financial life for 1000’s of years.
Whereas rice’s dominion started round 7,000BC within the Yangtze river’s fertile marshes, it was not till the Han dynasty that it turned the soul of Chinese language life. Farmers prayed to the “Divine Farmer” for bountiful harvests, and emperors carried out elaborate ploughing rituals to make sure cosmic concord. A Tang dynasty proverb warned: “No rice in the bowl, bones in the soil.”
Utilizing value information, we transformed each recorded wage – whether or not paid in silk, silver, hire or servants – into its rice equal. We might then evaluate the “real rice wages” of two classes of individuals we known as both “officials” or “peasants” (together with farmers), as a manner of monitoring ranges of inequality over the 2 millennia for the reason that begin of the Han dynasty in 202BC. This chart exhibits how real-wage inequality in China rose and fell over the previous 2,000 years, based on our rice-based evaluation.
Official-peasant wage ratio in imperial China over 2,000 years:
The ratio describes the a number of by which the ‘real rice wage’ of the common ‘official’ exceeds that of the common ‘peasant’, giving a sign of fixing inequality ranges over two millennia.
Peng Zhou, CC BY-SA
The chart’s black line describes a tug-of-war between progress and inequality over the previous two millennia. We discovered that, throughout every main dynasty, there have been 4 key components driving ranges of inequality in China: know-how (T), establishments (I), politics (P), and social norms (S). These adopted the next cycle with outstanding regularity.
1. Expertise triggers an explosion of progress and inequality
In the course of the Han dynasty, new iron-working strategies led to higher ploughs and irrigation instruments. Harvests boomed, enabling the Chinese language empire to balloon in each territory and inhabitants. However this bounty largely went to these on the prime of society. Landlords grabbed fields, bureaucrats gained privileges, whereas abnormal farmers noticed valuable little reward. The empire grew richer – however so did the hole between excessive officers and the peasant majority.
Even when the Han fell round AD220, the rise of wage inequality was barely interrupted. By the point of the Tang dynasty (AD618–907), China was having fun with a golden age. Silk Street commerce flourished as two extra technological leaps had a profound impression on the nation’s fortunes: block printing and refined steelmaking.
Block printing enabled the mass manufacturing of books – Buddhist texts, imperial examination guides, poetry anthologies – at unprecedented velocity and scale. This helped unfold literacy and standardise administration, in addition to sparking a bustling market in bookselling.
In the meantime, refined steelmaking boosted every little thing from agricultural instruments to weaponry and architectural {hardware}, reducing prices and elevating productiveness. With a extra literate populace and an abundance of stronger steel items, China’s economic system hit new heights. Chang’an, then China’s cosmopolitan capital, boasted unique markets, lavish temples, and a swirl of overseas retailers having fun with the Tang dynasty’s prosperity.
Whereas the Tang dynasty marked the high-water mark for ranges of inequality in Chinese language historical past, subsequent dynasties would proceed to wrestle with the identical core dilemma: how do you reap the advantages of progress with out permitting a very privileged – and more and more corrupt – bureaucratic class to push everybody else into peril?
2. Establishments sluggish the rise of inequality
All through the 2 millennia, some establishments performed an necessary position in stabilising the empire after every burst of progress. For instance, to alleviate tensions between emperors, officers and peasants, imperial exams referred to as “Ke Ju” have been launched throughout the Sui dynasty (AD581-618). And by the point of the Track dynasty (AD960-1279) that adopted the demise of the Tang, these exams performed a dominant position in society.
They addressed excessive ranges of inequality by selling social mobility: abnormal civilians have been granted higher alternatives to ascend the earnings ladder by reaching prime marks. This induced higher competitors amongst officers – and strengthened emperors’ authority over them within the later dynasties. In consequence, each the wages of officers and wage inequality went down as their bargaining energy progressively diminished.
Nevertheless, the rise of every new dynasty was additionally marked by a progress of forms that led to inefficiencies, favouritism and bribery. Over time, corrupt practices took root, eroding belief in officialdom and heightening wage inequality as many officers commanded casual charges or outright bribes to maintain their existence.
In consequence, whereas the emergence of sure establishments was in a position to put a break on rising inequality, it usually took one other highly effective – and generally extremely damaging – issue to start out decreasing it.
Emperor Taizong Receiving the Tibetan Envoy (circa AD601-670). This well-known Chinese language portray depicts the growth of Chinese language affect throughout the Tang dynasty.
The Historical past Assortment/Alamy Inventory Photograph
3. Political infighting and exterior wars scale back inequality
Finally, the rampant rise in inequality seen in nearly each main Chinese language dynasty bred deep tensions – not solely between the higher and decrease courses, however even between the emperor and their officers.
These pressures have been heightened by the pressures of exterior battle, as every dynasty waged wars in pursuit of additional progress. The Tang’s three century-rule featured conflicts such because the Jap Turkic-Tang battle (AD626), the Baekje-Goguryeo-Silla battle (666), and the Arab-Tang battle of Talas (751).
The ensuing demand for extra navy spending drained imperial coffers, forcing wage cuts for troopers and tax hikes on the peasants – breeding resentment amongst each that generally led to in style uprisings. In a determined bid for survival, the imperial court docket then slashed officers’ pay and stripped away their bureaucratic perks.
The consequence? Inequality plummeted throughout these occasions of battle and rise up – however so did stability. Famine was rife, frontier garrisons mutinied, and for many years, warlords carved out territories whereas the imperial centre floundered.
So, this shrinking wage hole can’t be stated to have resulted in a happier, extra steady society. Somewhat, it mirrored the truth that everybody – wealthy and poor – was worse off within the chaos. In the course of the closing imperial dynasty, the Qing (from the top of the seventeenth century), real-terms GDP per particular person was dropping to ranges that had final been seen firstly of the Han dynasty, 2,000 years earlier.
4. Social norms emphasise concord, protect privilege
One different frequent issue influencing the rise and fall of inequality throughout China’s dynasties was the shared guidelines and expectations that developed inside every society.
A putting instance is the social norms rooted within the philosophy of Neo-Confucianism, which emerged within the Track dynasty on the finish of the primary millennium – a interval generally described as China’s model of the Renaissance. It blended the ethical philosophy of classical Confucianism – created by the thinker and political theorist Confucius throughout the Zhou dynasty (1046-256BC) – with metaphysical components drawn from each Buddhism and Daoism.
Fresco of Confucius discovered on a 2000-year-old Western Han tomb.
Artwork Assortment/Alamy Inventory Photograph
Neo-Confucianism emphasised social concord, hierarchical order and private advantage – values that bolstered imperial authority and bureaucratic self-discipline. Unsurprisingly, it shortly gained the help of emperors eager to make sure management of their individuals, and have become the mainstream college of thought within the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Nevertheless, Neo-Confucianist pondering proved a double-edged sword. Native gentry hijacked this ethical authority to fortify their very own energy. Clan leaders arrange Confucian faculties and carried out elaborate ancestral rites, projecting themselves as guardians of custom.
Over time, these social norms turned inflexible. What had as soon as fostered order and legitimacy turned brittle dogma, extra helpful for preserving privilege than guiding reform. Neo-Confucian beliefs developed right into a protecting veil for entrenched elites. When the load of disaster ultimately got here, they provided little resilience.
The final dynasty
China’s closing imperial dynasty, the Qing, collapsed below the load of a number of uprisings each from inside and with out. Regardless of reaching spectacular financial progress throughout the 18th century – fuelled by agricultural innovation, a inhabitants increase, and the roaring world commerce in tea and porcelain – ranges of inequality exploded, partially on account of widespread corruption.
The notorious authorities official Heshen, extensively considered probably the most corrupt determine within the Qing dynasty, amassed a private fortune reckoned to exceed the empire’s total annual income (one estimate suggests he amassed 1.1 billion taels of silver, equal to round US$270 billion (£200bn), throughout his profitable profession).
Imperial establishments did not restrain the inequality and ethical decay that the Qing’s progress had initially masked. The mechanisms that when spurred prosperity – technological advances, centralised forms and Confucian ethical authority – ultimately ossified, serving entrenched energy moderately than adaptive reform.
When shocks like pure disasters and overseas invasions struck, the system might not reply. The collapse of the empire turned inevitable – and this time there was no groundbreaking know-how to allow a brand new dynasty to take the Qing’s place. Nor have been there recent social beliefs or revitalised establishments able to rebooting the imperial mannequin. As overseas powers surged forward with their very own technological breakthroughs, China’s imperial system collapsed below its personal weight. The age of emperors was over.
A grandfather and grandson beg for meals amid the collapse of China’s Qing dynasty within the late Nineteenth century.
UtCon Assortment/Alamy Inventory Photograph
The world had turned. As China launched into two centuries of technological and financial stagnation – and political humiliation by the hands of Nice Britain and Japan – different nations, led first by Britain after which the US, would step as much as construct world empires on the again of recent technological leaps.
In these fashionable empires, we see the identical 4 key influences on their cycles of progress and inequality – know-how, establishments, politics and social norms – however taking part in out at an ever-faster fee. Because the saying goes: historical past doesn’t repeat itself, but it surely usually rhymes.
Rule Britannia
If imperial China’s inequality saga was written in rice and rebellions, Britain’s industrial revolution featured steam and strikes. In Lancashire’s “satanic mills”, steam engines and mechanised looms created industrialists so wealthy that their fortunes dwarfed small nations.
In 1835, social observer Andrew Ure enthused: “Machinery is the grand agent of civilisation.” But for a lot of many years, the steam engines, spinning jennies and railways disproportionately enriched the brand new industrial class, simply as within the Han dynasty of China 2,000 years earlier. The employees? They inhaled soot, lived in slums – and staged Europe’s first symbolic protest when the Luddites started smashing their looms in 1811.
A spinning jenny.
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
In the course of the Nineteenth century, Britain’s richest 1% hoarded as a lot as 70% of the nation’s wealth, whereas labourers toiled 16-hour days in mills. In cities like Manchester, little one employees earned pennies whereas industrialists constructed palaces.
However as inequality peaked in Britain, the backlash brewed. Commerce unions shaped (and have become authorized in 1824) to demand truthful wages. Reforms such because the Manufacturing unit Acts (1833–1878) banned little one labour and capped working hours.
Though authorities forces intervened to suppress the uprisings, unrest such because the 1830 Swing Riots and 1842 Normal Strike uncovered deep social and financial inequalities. By 1900, little one labour was banned and pensions had been launched. The 1900 Labour Illustration Committee (later the Labour Get together) vowed to “promote legislation in the direct interests of labour” – a putting echo of how China’s imperial exams had tried to open paths to energy.
Slowly, the working class noticed some enchancment: actual wages for Britain’s poorest employees progressively elevated over the latter half of the Nineteenth century, as mass manufacturing lowered the price of items and increasing manufacturing unit employment offered a extra steady livelihood than subsistence farming.
After which, two world wars flattened Britain’s elite – the Blitz didn’t discriminate between wealthy and poor neighbourhoods. When peace lastly returned, the Beveridge Report gave rise to the welfare state: the NHS, social housing, and pensions.
Earnings inequality plummeted in consequence. The highest 1%’s share fell from 70% to fifteen% by 1979. Whereas China’s inequality fell through dynastic collapse, Britain’s decline resulted from war-driven destruction, progressive taxation, and expansive social reforms.
Wealth share of prime 1% within the UK
Proof for UK inequality earlier than 1895 shouldn’t be effectively documented; dotted curve is conjectured primarily based on Kuznets curve. Sources: Alvaredo et al (2018), World Inequality Database.
Peng Zhou, CC BY-SA
Nevertheless, from the Nineteen Eighties onwards, inequality in Britain has begun to rise once more. This new cycle of inequality has coincided with one other technological revolution: the emergence of non-public computer systems and data know-how — improvements that basically reworked how wealth was created and distributed.
The period was accelerated by deregulation, deindustrialisation and privatisation — insurance policies related to former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, that favoured capital over labour. Commerce unions have been weakened, earnings taxes on the best earners have been slashed, and monetary markets have been unleashed. As we speak, the richest 1% of UK adults personal extra 20% of the nation’s whole wealth.
The UK now seems to be within the worst of each worlds – wrestling with low progress and rising inequality. But renewal continues to be inside attain. The present UK authorities’s pledge to streamline regulation and harness AI might spark recent progress – offered it’s coupled with critical funding in abilities, fashionable infrastructure, and inclusive establishments geared to learn all employees.
On the similar time, historical past reminds us that know-how is a lever, not a panacea. Sustained prosperity comes solely when institutional reform and social attitudes evolve in line with innovation.
The American century
Whereas China’s growth-and-inequality cycles unfolded over millennia and Britain’s over centuries, America’s story is a fast-forward drama of cycles lasting mere many years. Within the early twentieth century, a number of waves of recent know-how widened the hole between wealthy and poor dramatically.
But this era of unprecedented riches for a handful of magnates coincided with extreme imbalances within the broader US economic system. The “roaring Twenties” had boosted consumerism and inventory hypothesis, however wage progress for a lot of employees lagged behind skyrocketing company earnings. By 1929, the highest 1% of People owned greater than a 3rd of the nation’s earnings, making a precariously slim base of prosperity.
When the US inventory market crashed in October 1929, it laid naked how susceptible the system was to the fortunes of a tiny elite. Hundreds of thousands of on a regular basis People – residing with out enough financial savings or safeguards – confronted speedy hardship, ushering within the Nice Despair. Breadlines snaked via metropolis streets, and banks collapsed below waves of withdrawals they might not meet.
Unemployed males queued exterior a Nice Despair soup kitchen in Chicago, 1931.
Nationwide Archives at Faculty Park through Wikimedia
In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal reshaped American establishments. It launched unemployment insurance coverage, minimal wages, and public works programmes to help struggling employees, whereas progressive taxation – with prime charges exceeding 90% throughout the second world battle. Roosevelt declared: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much – it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
Differently to the UK, the second world battle proved a terrific leveller for the US – producing thousands and thousands of jobs and drawing ladies and minorities into industries they’d lengthy been excluded from. After 1945, the GI Invoice expanded training and residential possession for veterans, serving to to construct a sturdy center class. Though entry remained unequal, particularly alongside racial strains, the period marked a shift towards the norm that prosperity needs to be shared.
In the meantime, grassroots actions led by figures like Martin Luther King Jr. reshaped social norms about justice. In his lesser-quoted speeches, King warned that “a dream deferred is a dream denied” and launched the Poor Individuals’s Marketing campaign, which demanded jobs, healthcare and housing for all People. This narrowing of earnings distribution throughout the post-war period was dubbed the “Great Compression” – but it surely didn’t final.
As oil crises of the Seventies marked the top of the previous cycle of inequality, one other cycle started with the full-scale emergence of the third industrial revolution, powered by computer systems, digital networks and data know-how.
The primary private laptop, made by IBM.
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-ND
As digitalisation reworked enterprise fashions and labour markets, wealth flowed to those that owned the algorithms, patents and platforms – not these working the machines. Hello-tech entrepreneurs and Wall Avenue financiers turned the brand new oligarchs. Inventory choices changed salaries because the true measure of success, and firms more and more rewarded capital over labour.
By the 2000s, the wealth share of the richest 1% climbed to 30% within the US. The hole between the elite minority and dealing majority widened with each firm inventory market launch, hedge fund bonus and quarterly report tailor-made to shareholder returns.
Deregulation gave Wall Avenue free rein to innovate and speculate, whereas public funding in housing, healthcare and training was curtailed. The implications got here to a head in 2008 when the US housing market collapsed and the monetary system imploded.
The World Monetary Disaster that adopted uncovered the fragility of a deregulated economic system constructed on credit score bubbles and concentrated threat. Hundreds of thousands of individuals misplaced their properties and jobs, whereas banks have been rescued with public cash. It marked an financial rupture and an ethical reckoning – proof that many years of pro-market insurance policies had produced a system that privatised acquire and socialised loss.
Inequality, lengthy rising within the background, now turned a evident, simple fault line in American life – and it has remained that manner ever since.
Fig 5. Wealth share and earnings share of prime 1% within the US
Sources: wealth inequality: World Inequality Database; earnings share: Picketty & Saez (2003). Dotted curves are conjectured primarily based on Kuznets curve.
Peng Zhou, CC BY-SA
So is the US proof that the Kuznets mannequin of inequality is certainly mistaken? Whereas the chart above exhibits inequality has flattened within the US for the reason that 2008 monetary disaster, there’s little proof of it really declining. And within the brief time period, whereas Donald Trump’s tariffs are unlikely to do a lot for progress within the US, his low-tax insurance policies received’t do something to boost working-class incomes both.
The story of “the American century” is a dizzying sequence of technological revolutions – from transport and manufacturing to the web and now AI – crashing one atop the opposite earlier than establishments, politics or social norms might catch up. In my opinion, the consequence shouldn’t be a damaged cycle however an interrupted one. Like a wheel that by no means completes its flip, inequality rises, reform stutters – and a brand new wave of disruption begins.
Our unequal AI future?
Like every technological explosion, AI’s potential is dual-edged. Just like the Tang dynasty’s bureaucrats hoarding grain, right this moment’s tech giants monopolise knowledge, algorithms and computing energy. Administration guide agency McKinsey has predicted that algorithms might automate 30% of jobs by 2030, from lorry drivers to radiologists.
But AI additionally democratises: ChatGPT tutors college students in Africa whereas open-source fashions reminiscent of DeepSeek empower worldwide startups to problem Silicon Valley’s oligarchy.
The rise of AI isn’t only a technological revolution – it’s a political battleground. Historical past’s empires collapsed when elites hoarded energy; right this moment’s combat over AI mirrors the identical stakes. Will it turn out to be a instrument for collective uplift like Britain’s post-war welfare state? Or a weapon of management akin to Han China’s grain-hoarding bureaucrats?
The reply hinges on who wins these political battles. In Nineteenth-century Britain, manufacturing unit house owners bribed MPs to dam little one labour legal guidelines. As we speak, Huge Tech spends billions lobbying to neuter AI regulation.
In the meantime, grassroots actions just like the Algorithmic Justice League demand bans on facial recognition in policing, echoing the Luddites who smashed looms not out of technophobia however to protest exploitation. The query shouldn’t be if AI can be regulated however who will write the principles: company lobbyists or citizen coalitions.
The true risk has by no means been the know-how itself, however the focus of its spoils. When elites hoard tech-driven wealth, social fault-lines crack broad open – as occurred greater than 2,000 years in the past when the Crimson Eyebrows marched towards Han China’s agricultural monopolies.
To be human is to develop – and to innovate. Technological progress raises inequality sooner than incomes, however the response will depend on how individuals band collectively. Initiatives like “Responsible AI” and “Data for All” reframe digital ethics as a civil proper, very similar to Occupy Wall Avenue uncovered wealth gaps. Even memes – like TikTok skits mocking ChatGPT’s biases – form public sentiment.
There isn’t any easy path between progress and inequality. However historical past exhibits our AI future isn’t preordained in code: it’s written, as at all times, by us.
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