Globalization, automation, and the transformation from a production-based to a service-based economy have already shifted the geography of growth in Western societies significantly. A process that caused public frustration and deteriorated trust in the problem solving capacity of democratic institutions. The development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) may put this process “on steroids,” threatening not only the jobs of blue-color workers, but those of lawyers, bankers, and engineers, too. Expanding job insecurity, stagnating wages, or the lack of economic opportunities will deepened populist resentment and threaten liberal democracy. Trump, Brexit, and the rise of the AfD in Germany might be merely preludes to the political upheavals that could come with advancing automation – especially if capitalism doesn’t reinvent itself.

For the Leadership Excellence Institute Zeppelin, Atlantic Council Resident Fellow Julian Mueller-Kaler writes about the emergence of modern technologies and their potential social implications, should capitalism fail to reinvent itself.

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