Corey Doctorow talks about the role of technology in society as not pre-determined, and I think this is mostly right. Trends are not inevitable.

At the same time, technology makes it easier to do one thing or another. And I think that’s the right framing for new technologies like AI: what does it make it easier to do? (It might be easier to answer that question by teasing apart the different technologies lumped together as “AI”.)