We are told that AI is inevitable, a revolutionary next stage in planetary intelligence. The calculative power that Big Tech is harnessing via its AI products cannot be doubted. But what if humanity is entering into the wrong social contract with AI?

A good future for humanity cannot mean inputting our lives into predatory AI models whose terms we don't control. It cannot mean trading away our own cognitive resources – and the power to define the future direction of the human mind – to corporations. It cannot mean ever greater cognitive dependence on business products, while ignoring the implications for environmental sustainability.

A good future with AI must mean putting social, community and planetary values first. This book imagines a different social contract with AI, and a different future. It presents clearly the social damage currently being done at work, and particularly the education and creative sectors, by accepting the wrong social contract with AI. And it debunks the philosophical prejudices that block us from valuing our own human cognitive resources.

In this second book of his trilogy, Humanising the Future, Nick Couldry argues that the time to renegotiate our contract with AI is now. This book opens a path to doing so.