AI as Social Technology: Astor Lecture by Professor Henry Farrell

Why It Matters

Viewing AI as a social technology forces businesses and regulators to address its systemic effects, not just its technical capabilities, shaping more effective governance and investment strategies.

Key Takeaways

• AI should be viewed as a social, not just technical, technology.
• Interdisciplinary dialogue needed between computer scientists and social scientists.
• Grand AI hype distracts from immediate, messy societal impacts.
• AI acts as an intermediary for human knowledge, reshaping markets, bureaucracy.
• AI is another shock in the long industrial revolution.

Summary

Professor Henry Farrell, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, delivered the Astor Lecture titled “AI as Social Technology.” He argued that large‑language models and related AI systems should be understood not merely as intelligent agents but as a new form of cultural and social technology that reshapes how societies organize information.

Farrell warned that current debates are dominated by computer‑science narratives and speculative visions of singularity, which obscure the immediate, concrete ways AI is already embedding in markets, bureaucracies, and democratic processes. He called for a common vocabulary that bridges computer scientists, political scientists, sociologists, and economists.

He illustrated his point with examples such as the “philosopher’s stone” rhetoric of AI proponents, Elon Musk’s “Doge” project to overhaul federal governance, and the AI‑2027 paper that imagines AI‑run societies. By comparing AI to the aftershocks of the Industrial Revolution, he highlighted its role as an intermediary that translates vast human knowledge into actionable decisions.

The lecture suggests that businesses and policymakers must treat AI as an institutional force, anticipate its messy interactions with existing structures, and develop interdisciplinary frameworks for governance. Ignoring this perspective risks policy blind spots and mis‑aligned investments as AI continues to reshape coordination at scale.

Original Description

Join Henry Farrell, SNF Agora Institute Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, moderated by Pepper Culpepper, Blavatnik Chair in Government and Public Policy, as he delivers the Astor Lecture on AI as social technology, as part of his Astor Visiting Lectureship.

There is vigorous debate over whether AI Large Language Models are a kind of "normal technology" like electricity that will gradually change the economy, or alternatively whether we are on the cusp of an epochal change, in which agentic machine intelligence might even replace the human species. These arguments overlook the ways in which AI can be considered instead as a social technology: that is, a systematic means for reorganising social relations among human beings. Building on joint work with collaborators, Professor Farrell will explain how emerging AI systems can be considered as equivalent to past large scale systems of information and coordination like markets, bureaucracy and even democracy.

Blavatnik School of Government,

University of Oxford

http://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/