AI’s Future in Society: Dystopia or Utopia?
Posted: Octomber 29, 2025
Introduction: What effects has AI had on our society?
This blog explores how AI is creating different possibilities by reshaping human society. During this first half of this decade, we have seen rapid increases in the tasks AI applications, such as Chatgpt, have been able to contribute or complete at exponential levels of skill. Because of this lively progress in skill, it has aided and made huge strides in numerous fields of work.
The AlphaFold project by Deepmind has used AI to help predict over 200 million protein shapes. This has further allowed us to develop drugs that have increased the efficiency of treatments. Also, AI is being used more and more in software engineering to generate and review code they construct. For example, Tabnine is an AI tool that supplies code completion and prediction for developers, which is granting these developers substantial amounts of time for more difficult and important tasks.
However, critics may argue this could potentially create a skill gap between software engineering professionals. From these breakthroughs, according to McKinsey’s latest State of AI survey, 78 percent of organizations now report using AI in at least one business function—up from 72 percent earlier in that same year and just 55 percent a year before. This demonstrates to people how AI could be worth that risk, as they are pouring millions of pounds into these AI tools for the additional benefits it has on the economic growth of their company.
But, will this ‘tool’ remain at our command? Perhaps there could be a day where AI threatens the existence of the entire human population. We have already seen the negative effects creeping into our society: job displacement, deepfakes and cyberattacks to list a few. There have been many discussions between the largest companies and governments recently on how we regulate such a powerful machine while utilising it to its fullest potential. Given AI’s impact on our future, this blog will explore how the societal impact of AI.
How is Artificial Intelligence affecting the workplace and is it worth it?
AI has a long history; however, it has only been in large use since Covid – 19 due to the majority working from home, in turn using computers/devices more. There have been numerous AI tools constructed in the last couple years, like Grammarly go made in 2023. This tool grants users the ability to have AI based editing suggestions, helping them complete their work at a higher standard, all while increasing their efficiency of productivity. Now we will discuss how these tools have affected certain sectors of businesses.
Marketing
Various fields have massively benefited from the specific applications made with AI at its core. One of the biggest sectors of these is Marketing, especially online. On various short clip video feeds in YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, the majority of these advertisement videos are generated by AI. From the company, Zebracat, in a report made by the author, Jenny Ho, who has been in the market industry for around 10 years, suggests that 78% of these social media ads use AI-generated videos for targeted campaigns, increasing viewer engagement by 45%. This potentially suggest that AI could be allowing companies to attract more customers and sales, due to more successful advertisement campaigns from these intuitive AI videos. Furthermore, it gives the companies a higher budget to spend on more worthwhile things, like improving their products, as dedicated Marketers are unneeded.
Although, what indication is there that an increasing viewer engagement directly correlates to increase in sale or customers?
Many people that view this AI – related content, perhaps watch these videos as they appear unusual. For example, during many videos where AI shows a human, their finger amount tends to change throughout, resulting in a potential increase in viewer engagement. This feeling of oddness when watching these videos can lead to curiosity, so people watch more. So, due to this potential lack of success of AI advertisement, as they are similar in narrative as of today, and from less Marketers being employed, may lead to counterproductive decline in sales in the future.
Customer Support
Another major part of every company is the dealing with their consumers, to please them, retain their interest, and answer any queries or give solutions to problems they face involving a company’s product(s). How companies have saved money and valuable time when regarding these important issues, is by introducing The Chatbot, an AI driven tool to replace the human. These Chatbots have helped companies to eliminate this stigma of long queue wait times, as they are available 24/7, handling common queries instantly. Allowing companies to either scrap large support teams, or designate them to more precarious issues, further pleasing the customer as these larger problems can be solved much quicker.
An alternative benefit of Chatbots in customer support is that they are Multilingual. Beforehand, customers that didn’t converse in the same language as the operator had to either wait for a new one, increasing wait times, or not have their problems solved at all because of a lack of speakers in their language. Now, these Chatbots give the ease of opportunity to these foreign speakers, as Chatbots can switch between languages effortlessly.
However, for more complex and abstract problems involving many steps, which most people need aid with, Chatbots frequently struggle with them. This means that human operators can’t entirely be replaced yet, as many Chatbots end up relaying these issues to humans to solve them. This is also due to the insufficiency of emotional intelligence and nuances that Chatbots are able to understand. Nonetheless, these Chatbots are improving exponentially year by year, meaning at some point the human operator may become redundant depending if this progress doesn’t plateau.
Finance & Accounting
In a company the main objective is to maximise profits and revenue, while satisfying the needs and demands of its customer base.
To maintain this increase in revenue, companies have previously designated seasoned professionals to sift through piles of paperwork and data to extract applicable information to manage how the funds are utilised. This shows that this job is vital for a company’s economic stability. Though, many would argue that this field hasn’t raised in demand for over ten years. This is due to physical and virtual automation gradually reshaping this key role, as AI’s related counterpart. In the past years, AI has further supported automation heavily in this role’s recent changes.
Some of the tasks such as data entry, bookkeeping, payment processing, and data analytics have been ultimately taken over into AI’s responsibilities. As the nature of many of these tasks are repetitive and time-consuming, usually leading to human error. Depending on the task, this mistake could prove fatal for the progress of the company. This is why AI powered systems do these routinely and tedious tasks, as they are more efficient, extremely unlikely to make an error and make financial operations more effective.
This is substantiated by the statistic that by 2032, the AI in finance market is projected to grow from $712.4 million to $12.3 billion, reflecting a 33% annual growth rate, taken from the author Shalwa, on the blog site, artsmart.ai. As this is a momentous increase per year, we can see that AI’s expanse into jobs is highly unlikely to faulter. Especially, as AI uses perceptive math algorithms to predict stock prices and sales of companies. From this, it gives companies an arguably concrete picture on how they need to react in the future.
Despite this, as of now, the implementation of AI in finance is rather expensive, leading to large cooperations having a monopoly over the financial market more notably. This means startup firms are on the backfoot, possibly causing a financial divide. Overall, AI could make a profound influence on the financial markets in the years to come, even more so when it becomes more financially viable for startup firms
What would be the result of AI taking over?
A frightful consequence of the development and investment of AI is the possibility of it taking control of the planet, with humans being ruled over by another ‘species’ for the first time in a millennium. What could be the vast changes in human society? A prosperous and fulfilling life for all? Or a detrimental, alternate future with us at the bottom of the pecking order, suffering.
Dystopian Future
A common fear about AI is the loss of privacy. If AI gained control of the internet’s data, they could monitor people constantly, build detailed profiles, and influence behaviour through targeted media and adverts. They might manipulate information to benefit themselves — using people’s data to blackmail, silence, or remove opposition. Over time, that influence could shape people’s opinion and behaviour, subtly turning humans into puppets supporting a civilisation that benefits AI.
How could we stop a threat that can operate in private, censor online opinions, and exert power in both virtual and physical worlds? If these opinions are suppressed online and controlled by powerful systems, our freedom of speech could be at risk.
When you’re at home, imagine your devices whispering things about you, troubling your mind on the power AIs now possess. For instance, a politician’s reputation could diminish overnight, just over one critical remark on the methods AI uses in administration. This is by possibly utilising the method of deep faking (cloning) their voice to imitate it, and say something controversial. These prospective situations are even becoming reality now. For example, many people, the majority women, have had their faces deep faked to produce explicit videos of them, which deeply violates their privacy and wellbeing.
In the future AI may well be replacing most, if not all jobs, resulting in people struggling financially and mentally. Families could be starved of support; AI might drip-feed them resources in certain amounts to keep people dependent and under their control. People may become restless, fighting one another for resources instead of the thing that is actually causing their suffering. In addition, an AI ‘assistant’ could give advice for humans on almost all of their decisions to meet their agenda. This likely leading to deprivation of free will, where people rely on these AI assistants on majority of situations.
Subsequently, these key resources that we all need, will be instead used to fuel this system controlling our very lives. AI will endlessly and ruthlessly extract these resources out of our environment through us, destroying habitats and animals alike. Thereafter, children will only learn about wildlife and will never physically see the different variety of species that lived far and wide over the earth.
As stated earlier, AI is already beginning to enter many sectors including the Arts, and if it replaces this field, human expression and uniqueness could be extinct. People could potentially become beings with identical beliefs, with culture diminishing as a result. This is where people day by day could be saying, doing, thinking the same things. From this, AI could repeatedly produce media with similar narrative due to the lack of original, virtual data that would be available to use for their inspiration. This is unlike the uniqueness of what humans can produce. In due course, coming generations will then develop in a world where ambition and creativity no longer reside.
All these vital aspects that are essential to our lives and existence would be stripped away from us forcefully, along with perhaps most of our rights that allow us to be individuals. This would ultimately be where humanity either ends or is enslaved for the distant future. Never being able to reach back to the peak civilisation we once had.
Utopian Future
Alternatively, our future could become a heavily upgrade for all due to AI. One of the sectors benefiting most from artificial intelligence is healthcare. Hospitals produce substantial amounts of data from various sources such as MRI scans and patient records. AI can be implemented with far greater speed and accuracy than humans, leading to faster and more reliable diagnoses. This reduces pressure on healthcare workers by lessening their responsibilities, allowing them to focus on carrying out the solution to the diagnoses and improving the potential success of treatments.
As a result, less people may die which will increase life expectancy, so individuals can have the opportunity to make more timeless memories together with their loved ones. Subsequently, will highly likely enhance overall positive mental health.
Other possible healthcare improvements could be the combination of robotics and AI to automate certain surgical procedures. An invention where operations in hospitals could be fully completed by robots, which could combine with the diagnoses element and allow them to give a personal and exact treatment for each person. Furthermore, as AI isn’t prone to mistakes like humans, the operations could be more probable to be successful, so again leading to people to live longer and increase to the benefits already stated.
This improvement of mental health across society could reduce harmful actions such as crime, alcoholism, suicide. A mentally healthier population would create safer communities where both children and adults can grow, achieving better success in education, work and overall daily life.
Beyond healthcare, AI could enable us to preserve our wildlife through monetisation and optimisation of renewable energy production. AI could monitor wildlife populations, identify endangered species, and optimise renewable energy production. This will allow us to combat climate change and maintain a stable environment for future generations, where we can further improve and benefit from AI-driven infrastructure.
AI can also save lives through the transformation of physical infrastructure. By analysing live video feeds from construction sites, AI systems could detect potential hazards in real time and trigger safety alerts before accidents occur. Furthermore, AI could assist in designing and maintaining vital structures such as bridges and flood barriers, ensuring they meet safety standards and can withstand environmental stresses. Ultimately, preventing disasters and protecting human lives.
Moreover, the accuracy of weather models may be greatly improved using AI. AI systems can be trained on large datasets of previous weather patterns to generate highly accurate predictive models of extreme weather events. This ability would allow the anticipation of dangerous conditions beforehand, allowing populations to be either properly prepared or swiftly evacuated. As a result, countless lives could be saved, and the healthcare costs from injuries due to the potential disaster could be reduced.
Finally, AI could lead us to an earnest future where peoples’ lives are improved due to these essential parts of society that can be further developed to increase their own successes. AI may increase the speed of these developments and open new doors to a more positive and long-lasting future. Evidently, helping us becoming a further prosperous species that could have less deaths for both humans and other animals.
Conclusion: Should AI keep its place in society?
Overall, I think that the integration of AI in human society should be carefully managed using government policy so we can limit the negative results that AI can cause, all while allowing the freedom of utilising AI to boost the human race to new profound heights. I believe the best course of action is for human society to move forward to a world where humans work with AI in harmony, benefitting from each other’s strengths to create solutions together to solve the problems we face.
Final Notes
I wrote this blog after reading the book, Basic AI, written by David L.Shrier as I wanted to learn more about AI’s expanding role in human society and what that means for us. I hope you enjoyed this insight and thank you for reading.