AI and the Decline of Human Agency | Jacob Ward

Mar 10, 2026

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AI, under the dangerous control of tech oligarchs, is creating a world with shrinking human choice, creativity, and connection. Technology journalist Jacob Ward, author of The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back, describes why restraint and resistance are necessary to fight back against the AI juggernaut. Highlights include:

How tech journalism emphasizes novelty and business profits and amplifies tech companies' hype as journalists seek to maintain access to powerful tech leaders;
How profit-driven AI exploits a human bias toward fast, easy thinking and decision-making that leads us to outsource our choices and judgment to automated systems;
Why AI large language models (LLMs) are like cover bands providing the 'greatest hits' of humanity's past achievement - an 'artificial hive mind' that is biased toward middle-of-the-road, derivative, and unoriginal ideas;
How impersonal, unaccountable, 'black box' AI decision-making creates Kafka-esque systems in government services, jobs, and loans - disproportionately harming the least powerful in society;
Why AI large language models are 2 to 3 times more biased than the average person across various cultural and demographic dimensions;
How AI will increase addiction and social isolation, replacing real-world relationships with flattering, always available chatbot 'friends';
Why our collective sense-making and democratic decision-making will be further threatened by AI - creating even more tightly sealed, individually customized information bubbles that conform to our feelings, not the truth;
How many tech oligarchs pushing AI are also involved in genetic engineering projects with the aim of breeding 'optimized' babies;
Why tech companies' legal liability and U.S. states' AI regulations are hopeful avenues of AI pushback;
Why we need to rediscover the value of restraint and realize that not all innovation is beneficial for humanity and the planet.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/jacob-ward

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