Walk into any cafe today and you’ll see it: heads bowed, eyes glazed, fingers flicking endlessly. We’ve quickly become used to this image, but from a historian’s perspective it’s astounding how quickly it happened – a radical transformation in the way we relate to one another.
Ask the CEOs of big tech companies and they’ll tell you the rise of AI is much bigger. Some even say it may be the last invention we make. They are in a race to create alien minds: systems we do not understand, and that we may not be able to control. These minds are not designed so much as summoned into being. And so w e must ask: what will the rise of AI do to our very humanity?
Well, the omens are not good. Just look at what the first wave of big tech has already done to us. Literacy and numeracy scores are plummeting. Teenage depression, anxiety and suicide attempts are rising. Face-to-face socialising is collapsing as we retreat indoors, eyes glued to screens. Solitude is becoming the hallmark of our age. The bleakest number I’ve seen is that American teenagers now spend 70% less time hosting or attending parties than in 2003. That’s right: 70%.
An entire stage of life – the messy, social and formative experience of being a teenager – is under attack by Silicon Valley. Laughing together, drinking together, flirting, dancing, even fighting and making up: all the rites of passage that teach us how to be human are vanishing.
It’s not just the young. Social media promised connection and community, but what it delivered was isolation and outrage. On Instagram, people spend more than 90% of their time watching videos from people they don’t know. Platforms reward those who are loudest, angriest and most extreme. Or, as a recent study in Nature concluded: “Those with both high psychopathy and low cognitive ability are the most actively involved in online political engagement.”
An entire stage of life – the messy, social and formative experience of being a teenager – is under attack by Silicon Valley
If the first wave of big tech captured our attention, this next one seeks to capture our affection. Think of AI companions that whisper back exactly what we want to hear. Think of AI porn that’s hyper-personalised, on-demand, and increasingly interactive. AI could be for human relationships what junk food is to nourishment. And these systems will not just exploit our desires, but reshape them. In the process,, the most intimate parts of our humanity – our capacity for love, curiosity, empathy –will be optimised for profit. The risk is not just that we will lose control of our machines, but that we will lose control of ourselves.
What can we do against this onslaught? What would be an appropriate, measured response?
As a historian, I believe we can find the answer in our past. We all know about the two great moral revolutions of the 19th century: the fight against slavery and the struggle for women’s rights. But few remember that there was a third one: temperance. Many abolitionists and suffragettes were also temperance activists.
This movement is largely forgotten nowadays, but it holds vital lessons for us. Back then, across Europe and North America, alcohol was not a casual indulgence but a social catastrophe. There were no warning labels, no age restrictions or limits on advertising. Taverns dotted every street corner, wages disappeared into the bottle, and families were torn apart by violence and neglect. The alcohol industry profited from human weakness while devastating entire communities.
That is why people rose against it. The temperance movement was one of the largest democratic and bipartisan movements in history, led by women and workers, teachers and preachers. They believed that real freedom meant being fully present. To choose connection over compulsion. They saw addiction for what it is: the moment when the power of choice no longer exists. And so they demanded radical measures: higher taxes, stricter licensing and even total prohibition.
Today, we face a new addiction industry – not of wine and whiskey, but of apps and algorithms. Big tech should increasingly be seen as big alcohol and big tobacco. Many of our brightest minds are building a single great Moloch, an attention-hijacking machine that devours our focus, steals our time and leaves us emptier by the hour. And AI threatens to supercharge it all.
But here’s my warning to Silicon Valley: you’re awakening a dragon. Public anger is stirring, and I believe it could grow into a movement as fierce and unstoppable as the temperance crusade a century ago. The movement to ban phones in schools is just the beginning. Poll after poll finds that people across the west think that AI will worsen almost everything they care about, from our health and relationships to our jobs and democracies. By a three-to-one margin, people want more regulation.
History shows how this movement could be ignited by a small group of citizens, and how powerful it could become. Just as we had mass protests against the nuclear arms race, we may soon see mass resistance to the AI arms race. A century ago, temperance activists even managed to push a constitutional amendment through the US Congress to ban alcohol altogether.
Those who want to avoid provoking something equally drastic should learn from the past.
This is an adapted extract from one of Rutger Bregman’s upcoming Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4. The series of four lectures begins on 25 November. He will be in conversation at The Observer Book Club on 13 January.
Join us live in The Observer newsroom with Rutger Bregman on Tuesday 13 January, 6.30-7.30pm – click here to claim your ticket.
Photograph by Jean-Marc Payet/Getty