As the routines of everyday life unfold, a question has been bothering me for sometime: will artificial intelligence (AI) irrevocably change the nature of the society we live in, and what happens if this transformation is shaped only by the privileged few?

For centuries, the struggle against inequality of caste, class, race, gender, has defined the human experience. But with the emergence of AI as a new, ungoverned force, we may soon find ourselves fighting a different kind of enemy: an invisible, algorithmic one. The prospect of human conflict being replaced by human–machine conflict, where the rules are written in code by a handful of elite technocrats, feels like a science fiction novel we never signed up for.

And yet, it is happening. Now.

The AI revolution is not an isolated event—it is unfolding against a backdrop of political decay, particularly in the West, where democratic institutions once seen as global ideals are faltering. In the United States, the rise of authoritarian populism, culture war politics, and Silicon Valley oligarchy signals a rupture in the liberal order that many across the Global South were taught to admire.

Growing up, many of us were encouraged to think, read, and behave like Westerners. The philosophical and cultural superiority of the West was treated not just as aspiration, but as common sense. But this perception is beginning to collapse. What was once idealized as the beacon of liberty, democracy, and civility now looks disturbingly like the very systems of control it once claimed to oppose.

The chaos engulfing the United States from the politicization of federal institutions to the normalization of white supremacist rhetoric, is more than a domestic crisis. It is a global inflection point. A new class has emerged from this turmoil: the techno-class, a coalition of billionaire entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and ideologically aligned engineers who have built the infrastructure of the digital age and now seek to dominate the social order it governs.