Column
Tessel van Oirsouw
Who determines the future of AI?
Freedom is not self-evident. This has long been clear to many, but even those who hadn't considered it until recently are beginning to realise that freedom is fragile and depends on choices: political, social and technological. The question is: how and by whom are those choices made?
"The future of AI is not a deterministic path, but a societal choice."
Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are playing an increasingly central role in answering that question. In recent years, we have seen beacons of democratic freedoms being bought by the billionaires who lead the so-called ‘AI revolution’. Jeff Bezos invoked free speech when he bought the Washington Post and prevented his editors from expressing support for Kamala Harris. The leaders of Big Tech were in the front row at the inauguration of Donald Trump. Elon Musk secured his ticket to the White House with the promise to save the US government from inefficiency and ‘woke policies’ – through an ‘AI-first’ strategy, of course.
Misleading narrative
Despite the public antics of the tech industry, AI is still often regarded as a neutral technology – or as something we simply cannot avoid. But that is a misleading narrative. Technology is never purely objective – it is shaped, both implicitly and explicitly, by values, interests and choices.
"Free speech"
It is no coincidence that Elon Musk bought Twitter at the time under the guise of "free speech" and gave free rein to disinformation, polarisation and automated bots that spread far-right messages. Technology shapes, strengthens and creates space for worldviews.
Free education
Anyone who studies the history of technology sees the pattern: it is never just the invention itself that changes the world, but the systems around it. The car only became transformative due to subsidies and highways. Mass literacy was not brought about by the printing press alone, but by free education. Nor were these sudden developments, but the result of years of effort. Anyone who claims that AI is inevitable and that the course of change simply happens to us is selling you a product – or an ideology.
Make agreements together
Part of freedom is that we make agreements together on the conditions under which we want to live. What we find acceptable and what we don't. This also applies to AI, and the kinds of visions of humanity we build into and around our systems. The future of AI is not a deterministic path, but a societal choice.
Tessel van Oirsouw (b. 1998) is Founder and Governance & Policy Lead at EthicAI. She holds a master's degree in AI Ethics and Society from the University of Cambridge and has researched the geopolitics of chips at Harvard Kennedy School. She has also worked on AI initiatives at various levels of government, including at the European Commission and the Scientific Council for Government Policy. She studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at VU Amsterdam.
magazine for social sciences and humanities alumni june 2025