What is one surprising, under-covered way that AI will influence American society?

What will millions of Americans, particularly men, do when AI consumes work? No one knows.

Seventy-one percent of Americans are concerned that AI will put “too many people out of work permanently,” according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. Approximately 44% of American jobs are either repetitive cognitive or repetitive manual jobs, according to the Federal Reserve, and AI is decimating entry-level white-collar jobs right now. Driving a truck is the most common job in 29 states, with most drivers being men, and robot trucks are now hitting the road. Meanwhile, college graduates are becoming Uber drivers.

CEOs tell me privately that they are looking at replacing 50 to 70% of their workers with AI in the next four years. Some of these companies are public, and their share prices get bid up with every downsizing. We soon will be measuring companies by how many millions they make per employee.

This is still somehow under-covered because no one has a satisfactory answer. Yes, vocational training is growing incrementally, and more people are questioning the value of a college degree. But many technologists are talking about a lost generation of workers. These people will not simply disappear; many will become disillusioned and radicalized.

Andrew Yang is CEO of Noble Mobile.

One of the surprising aspects of AI and robotics in the U.S. is the potential to revitalize rural communities through new approaches to farming and manufacturing. In regions like Kentucky’s Appalachia, AppHarvest is operating high-tech greenhouses that use AI and robotics to farm more efficiently and create local jobs. Similarly, FarmWise Labs in California is deploying AI-powered weeding machines across the Southwest, helping farmers reduce costs and farm with fewer pesticides. Bonsai Robotics is developing autonomous nut-harvesting machines to reduce reliance on seasonal labor, and Barnstorm is creating swarms of small robotic tractors to make farming more accessible for midsize growers in the Midwest.

Reindustrialization is also quietly occuring. In rural Indiana, Solinftec has opened the first U.S. robotics plant dedicated to agriculture, building AI-driven “Solix” field robots while hiring from the surrounding community. This marks a return of small-scale, tech-enabled manufacturing to rural America.

What’s most surprising is not just the technology itself, but where it’s taking root. AI and robotics are creating new economic possibilities in places that have suffered from limited infrastructure and opportunity, potentially bringing investment and hope to the regions that need it most.

Anne Neuberger is a senior adviser at a16z and a distinguished fellow at Stanford University and the Royal United Services Institute. She previously served as deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, after more than a decade in leadership roles at the National Security Agency.

Coexisting with AI will change the way we work, love and play — and we are not examining how that, in turn, may change our own humanity.

Let’s take love: What is the significance for society of studies revealing that 28% of U.S. adults have had an intimate relationship with an AI chatbot and 19% of high school students have had, or have a friend who has had, a romantic relationship with AI in the past year? Fewer human relationships, more life lived online, fewer babies, more robots: Any of these would create a profound change in how humans structure their world and perceive their humanity. In an era of increasing human isolation, are we rushing to leave behind what makes us people, simply to interact with machines that make us feel good?

And childhood: We are producing AI-enabled toys for children and showing them from an early age that companionship with AI is easier, ergo, better, than with humans; the AI is always kind and agreeable but other children make you cry.

We are embracing an AI cocoon at the cost of understanding our humanity. Imagine if we succeed.

Kay Firth-Butterfield is CEO of Good Tech Advisory and a recipient of a 2025 Time100 Impact Award. Her latest book, “Coexisting with AI: Work, Love, and Play in a Changing World,” will be published in January 2026.

The AI discourse is loud, all-encompassing and apocalyptic.

But AI will influence society not by making us jobless, or sucking all the joy out of reading, or learning or creating. Rather, what I see virtually every day is people, endlessly creative and inquisitive, trying to use AI tools in their life and work, to make things 5% more efficient, or 5% more fun or 10% less boring — and in doing so, inventing completely new ways of using the tech, and demanding new ways that we should build the tech for them. Two noteworthy examples I know of: a public defender building their own tools to transcribe body cam footage and a historian making use of visual models to scan and translate ancient texts. More generally, it could be workers in offices across the country using tools to assimilate and organize years of records.

People are using AI tech and coming to their own assessment of where it’s helpful and where it’s not and needs to be better. Those stories, told together, are forming a quiet but insistent chorus of change that you have to listen for carefully underneath the blaring one-note cacophony of tech-company hype. And those are the stories — of people, not AI — that we should be covering.

Suresh Venkatasubramanian is director of the Center for Technological Responsibility, Reimagination, and Redesign at Brown University and a former assistant director for science and justice in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

AI is getting better at not only creating human-sounding writing, but also real-time audio and video. As a result, crimes and deceptions that are familiar from the email era have found their way into live video conversations. Last year, a finance worker transferred $25 million of company money to criminals who had successfully used AI to impersonate the likeness of the company CFO and multiple other staff members for a real-time video chat.

News organizations used to be able to say that recordings of interviews with sources or videos of specific events were not merely evidence that a quote was accurate or that the event actually happened; they were proof. But not anymore.

For both everyday life and for journalists, the best hope for incontrovertible evidence now lies in cryptography — a system of algorithms that ensures a digital record is genuine. Much as blockchain encryption can prove the ordering of bitcoin transactions so that no one can spend the same cryptocurrency twice, a growing number of journalists are already using encryption to provide verifiable evidence of when a photo was generated. Camera manufacturers such as Sony, Nikon, Canon and Leica are marketing new capabilities that embed cryptographic digital signatures directly into photos at the moment of capture and upload the “official” version of the photo to secure databases. Although this does not rule out later alterations or fabricated counterevidence by malicious actors, it would provide cryptographically verifiable proof that a specific version of a file existed on a given date.

Equivalent capabilities are urgently needed for audio and video and should be a part of not only high-end cameras used by journalists, but also everyday smartphones.

We’ll all miss the world where seeing (or hearing) is believing, but that world is not coming back. In the new world, encryption may be the last best hope for knowing the truth.

Greg Allen is a senior adviser with the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

We talk often about the risks of AI, but we don’t talk enough about its potential benefits. AI is already the most powerful tool for the dissemination of human knowledge that mankind has ever invented. It can teach anyone anything they want to know about, in whatever learning style is optimal for them. This will dramatically democratize access to information. In years past, only the wealthy could afford the best investment consultants, the best doctors and the best lawyers. In the future, AI will make this expert advice available to anyone who seeks it, leading to possibly the largest expansion of human empowerment in our history.

AI also has the potential to be the most powerful tool ever created for the enhancement of human productivity. Although it will be disruptive (as technological advancement always is), it will likely create many more jobs for humans than it displaces, driving up wages, driving down prices through gains in productivity and efficiency, and creating an unparalleled explosion of human prosperity.

That is the potential upside of AI — if Congress can enact a regulatory framework that protects Americans against the malicious use of AI while at the same time enabling the amazingly beneficial changes it will bring to American society.

Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte represents California’s 23rd District in the U.S. House.

AI will force hard choices about how energy is allocated in America. Energy demand for developing advanced AI models is skyrocketing. One leading AI company expects to need 5 gigawatts of firm, reliable power (roughly equivalent to the output of five nuclear reactors) to train a single advanced model in 2028, with up to 25 gigawatts required nationwide for advanced AI training.

While the Trump administration has taken aggressive steps to speed development — streamlining permitting and allowing use of federal lands — those measures alone will not meet the scale of energy demand. On the current trajectory, the government may need to prioritize energy for AI over other uses to ensure the United States remains the global leader in advanced AI. Tools like the Defense Production Act’s priorities and allocations authorities, or the Department of Energy’s power to override state transmission decisions, make such prioritization possible.

But these choices raise fundamental questions: How should America balance the strategic importance of frontier AI against the needs of other sectors and communities? What more could be done to unlock supply? Possible answers include congressional reform to fast-track grid modernization and transmission line expansion, and partnering with trusted allies, such as Britain and Australia, to develop AI overseas while still under U.S. leadership and control.

Janet Egan is a senior fellow and deputy director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.

As hundreds of billions in private capital pour into data-center construction to meet growing but uncertain AI demand, critics focus on subsidies and energy consumption. But they miss the bigger strategic picture. This is critical 21st-century infrastructure with many key uses. And it’s getting built now.

Without this massive influx of private investment, America either falls behind in computing capacity — ceding technological leadership — or taxpayers fund 100% of the construction for these critical resources directly. The current arrangement splits the burden: Private investors shoulder primary construction costs while modest public incentives attract development.

Even if AI crashes spectacularly — which I consider extremely unlikely — taxpayers get transformative infrastructure with almost zero risk. Those data centers will serve cloud computing, scientific research and content delivery. The power generation and grid upgrades they require will provide broadly distributed benefits. The fiber networks and technical workforces they necessitate will remain in place.

So imagine it’s 1956, and a handful of trucking companies are offering to fund the Interstate Highway System, for the benefit of all. That’s essentially what’s happening now, and it’s an excellent deal.

Reid Hoffman is cofounder of LinkedIn, Inflection AI and Manas AI.

While much of the mainstream conversation about AI focuses on its potential for disruption, I see tremendous opportunity for empowerment. The key is AI literacy — the ability to understand, evaluate and apply AI to maximize its benefits. When communities engage thoughtfully, AI can be a force for growth and opportunity.

One example: Earlier this year, on “In AI We Trust?,” I interviewed Mason Grimshaw, a data scientist who co-founded IndigiGenius, an Indigenous-led nonprofit introducing Native communities to AI. Mason equips young people with AI literacy to advance data sovereignty, cultural preservation and economic opportunity — demonstrating how AI can safeguard, instead of supplant, community values.

I also work with companies proving that empowerment scales in the corporate sector. PepsiCo, for example, uses AI to support sustainability, small businesses and employee upskilling. Similarly, Walmart is using AI to provide training and career pathways for frontline workers, helping employees transition into higher-skilled roles while improving operational efficiency.

Leaders like Mason and these companies remind us that by investing in people-based initiatives, we can ensure AI enhances opportunity in our workplaces, homes and communities. If we get this right, the AI revolution will not be a story of disruption, but one of empowerment.

Miriam Vogel is president and CEO of EqualAI.

AI will flip American education by forcing educators to become more practical.

The market for $200,000 degrees that leave kids unemployed will soon shrink, as parental anxiety flips from “my kid needs a great college” to “college is failing my kid.”

When ChatGPT can write your essay but can’t fix your plumbing, community college and trade apprenticeships gain new appeal. Electricians, HVAC techs and dental hygienists can’t be outsourced to algorithms.

The coming wave mirrors homeschooling’s rise — parents bypassing broken institutions and finding their own fixes. Now, it will be 18-year-olds ditching lecture halls for on-the-job training, influencer tips and micro-credentials.

The infrastructure is hidden in plain sight: “YouTube University” teaches anything, and AI tools offer personalized learning paths that adapt faster than any professor. Whether they like it or not, employers will take on a bigger role in training their young workforce.

Elite universities are too rich to die, but they’re heading back to being truly academic and for a minority, with vocational paths for everyone else. The middle — those expensive, mediocre colleges — will get hollowed out.

Ryan Heath is a senior adviser at Weber Shandwick and a former Axios global correspondent.