From the Industrial Revolution to the advent of AI, the Enlightenment narrative has maintained that technology and progress go hand in hand. Technology is "the mother of civilizations," claimed Freeman Dyson. But acclaimed Oxford economist and Financial Times Best Book winner Carl Benedikt Frey, endorsed by Tony Blair, challenges this Enlightenment-era belief. Technology does not guarantee progress unless paired with the right social, political, and economic systems. Furthermore, bureaucracy, paradoxically, is vital for innovation when introduced at the right moment. The secret lies in "semi-autonomous innovation agencies" that unleash creative freedom early on, then shift into regulation mode to balance rapid scale-up with public safety and trust. Part 1: The promise and peril of progress. Progress is the exception rather than the rule. Part 2: How to make innovation work for all. The unexpected role of bureaucracy.
Carl Benedikt Frey is the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, both at the University of Oxford. He is also a fellow at Mansfield College, the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford, and Lund University鈥檚 Department of Economic History. His books include The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation (91桃色).