The Greatest Risks Posed by AI: Are We Experiencing Future Shock?
Originally published on LinkedIn - August 13, 2025
In the popular Audible podcast series Future Tense, Richard Ayoade and Warwick Davis explore a series of provocative questions about our near future — including robots, immortality, cars, food, holidays, and even relationships.
The tone is playful, but the themes are very serious: technology is evolving at a geometric rate, and will transform almost every aspect of human life.
Sooner rather than later.. let's face it.. it already has..
But beneath the wit lies a deeper question — one first articulated by Alvin Toffler in his 1970s classic book, Future Shock, and the subsequent 1972 Orson Welles–narrated documentary: What happens when change comes faster than our ability to adapt?
Orson's opening gambit in this film is as follows:
"In the course of my work, which takes me to just about every corner of the globe. I see many aspects of a phenomenon which I am just beginning to understand. Our modern technology has achieved a degree of sophistication beyond our wildest dreams, but this technology has exacted a pretty heavy price. We live in an age of anxiety and a time of stress. With all our sophistication, we are in fact the victims of our own technological strength, we are victims of shock, future shock"
Does this ring true with you?
Over 50 years ago, Toffler described Future Shock as “the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future.” It’s not just about new gadgets; it’s about the psychological, social, and cultural aftershocks of rapid change.
Today, with AI, automation, and biotechnology accelerating simultaneously, I believe we are living through Toffler’s predictions in real time.
The AI-Driven Acceleration
We’ve lived through industrial revolutions before, but never one with the reach and speed of AI. In previous transformations — steam, electricity, computing — there were decades to adjust. AI collapses those timelines. A new model trained today may be obsolete in six months, but in that time it will have already reshaped industries, workflows, and careers.
This acceleration poses several intertwined risks:
Decision-Making at Machine Speed
Economic Displacement
Erosion of Trust
Ethical Drift
Psychological Overload
From Future Tense to Future Shock
In Future Tense, the future is a curiosity — will we holiday on Mars, eat lab-grown steaks, or outsource our love lives to algorithms?
In Future Shock, the future is a force — reshaping identities, economies, and entire social contracts at a pace we struggle to process.
The truth is, both visions are accurate. Technology is both exciting and destabilising. AI may give us the tools to solve climate change, cure diseases, and extend human lifespans — but it will also challenge the institutions, values, and even the cognitive stability of our societies.
I am intrigued by the current thinking about Moore's Law in the world of AI. Indeed, the consensus seems that it is no longer relevant.
Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. This theory was first postulated back in 1965 and revised in 1975 by Intel's Gordon E Moore. Indeed, if he was still with us, would he revisit his theory 50 years later in 2025?
Mitigating the Shock
If we are indeed in a state of future shock, the answer isn’t to reject technology but to reframe our relationship with it. This means:
Ethical Foresight — Designing AI systems with transparency, accountability, and human oversight at the core.
Adaptive Education — Building lifelong learning systems that keep pace with AI’s evolution.
Resilient Governance — Updating laws, regulations, and international agreements to handle near-instant global impacts.
Human-Centric Design — Ensuring technology augments rather than replaces human dignity and agency.
Final Thought
AI is not just a technology; it’s an accelerant. It speeds up not only what we can do, but also how quickly we must confront the consequences of what we do.
In the words of Toffler, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
My Mamgu, Welsh for Grandmother, always said that she was never too old to learn, and that has been a touchstone through my personal development.
Strength through Agility.
The question for all of us — technologists, policymakers, and citizens — is whether we can keep our footing in a world where the future is no longer a destination, but a constant, disorienting present.
I would appreciate your thoughts on this.. For me, the future is a bright one with the right governance, control, and perspective. But what about Future Shock/Tense?
Future Shock on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU
Future Tense available on Audible.com
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