Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
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
bsg.ox.ac.uk
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
bsg.ox.ac.uk
