Author: Lu Lili (Guangdong)
(Our station,July 31)In human history, every major technological revolution has ultimately changed not only production tools, but also reshaped the way society is organized and restructured the relationship between humans and technology. Compared to all previous technological changes, the level of change brought by artificial intelligence is more profound. It is no longer limited to optimizing production processes and transmitting information, but deeply involved in knowledge production, decision assistance, and even the entire social operation system. This means that the core challenge facing humanity today is no longer just the development of stronger artificial intelligence technology, but also the establishment of a modern governance system that can match this new intelligent force.
The steam engine has revolutionized the way humans use natural energy. Electricity has promoted the overall upgrading of the complete industrial system. The Internet has completely broken the information barrier and restructured the business and social organization model. At present, AI is starting a deeper transformation. In the past, all kinds of machine tools expanded human's physical strength limit, and the Internet extended the boundary of information connection between people. However, artificial intelligence directly expanded human's cognitive ability. For the first time, human beings created an intelligent system that can independently participate in knowledge production, assist complex decision-making, and independently complete multiple complex tasks. When looking at artificial intelligence, we should not only focus on the functions it can achieve, but also consider a fundamental question: when humans have mastered the new power of intelligence, how should society organize, regulate, and utilize this power, and always maintain the core position of humans as the main body of development.
1、 Artificial intelligence is becoming a new core production force
Many people simply equate artificial intelligence with iterative software programs, but from the perspective of historical development, the value of artificial intelligence has long surpassed that of ordinary tool updates. In the stage of agricultural civilization, land is the primary production resource; Under industrial civilization, machines, energy, and capital have become the core production factors; Entering the information age, data and online platforms have become the core foundation for competition among all parties; In the era of artificial intelligence, various intelligent systems are transforming from tools that simply execute instructions to new social infrastructure that participates in production organization and independently generates knowledge.
The core of this transformation is not only the improvement of technological performance, but also the fundamental transformation of the production organization mode of the whole society. Traditional software can only strictly execute fixed rules pre-set by humans, while artificial intelligence has the ability to independently understand tasks, generate solutions, assist in comprehensive judgment, optimize business processes, and even independently complete some complete work. The competition between future industries and the national level is no longer just about equipment reserves and capital volume, but about the comprehensive ability to integrate and dispatch intelligent resources. It can be seen that the essence of competition in the field of artificial intelligence is by no means a competition between a single model and a single algorithm, but a comprehensive contest between the three capabilities of intelligent infrastructure construction, industrial coordination and organization, and comprehensive social governance.
2、 What AI truly changes is not the total amount of work, but the overall structure of labor value
When the public discusses artificial intelligence, the most concerned topic is always whether AI will replace human work on a large scale. While this issue is important, cognition still remains at the surface level. Throughout the technological revolutions, new technologies rarely simply eliminate all labor positions, but only reshape the value structure of labor. During the Industrial Revolution, machines replaced a large amount of manual labor, but at the same time gave birth to a complete modern industrial chain; The Internet wave has impacted the traditional offline industry, but has incubated new industrial tracks such as e-commerce, new media, online services, etc. The AI era will also follow the same development law.
In the future, a large amount of repetitive, standardized, and procedural basic work will gradually be replaced by automation, such as basic information organization, batch production of simple content, standardized data statistics, and execution tasks with fixed rules. On the contrary, the unique core abilities of humans will become increasingly scarce and precious, including the ability to think critically about key issues, the ability to make comprehensive judgments in complex scenarios, the ability to innovate and create new value, the ability to coordinate communication and coordination among multiple parties, and the ability to independently take responsibility and make value choices.
The profound changes brought about by artificial intelligence have never been about whether humans have work to do or not, but about defining which tasks must be completed by humans themselves. At the same time, an urgent practical problem arises: when a large number of basic and repetitive positions are covered by automation, the traditional path for young people to accumulate practical experience and grow and advance needs to be comprehensively reconstructed. In the past, practitioners relied on repeated standardization work to accumulate industry experience. In the future, young people must rely on complex problem solving, cross disciplinary collaboration, and practical innovation to achieve their ability growth. The national education system and industry talent training mechanism that are matched with it also need to be adjusted and adapted synchronously.
3、 Technological progress cannot automatically generate civilization progress
Technology determines the boundary of capabilities, while institutions anchor the value direction of development. It is not difficult to find that the social trends brought about by technological changes are never determined solely by technology itself. What truly influences the development pattern is the integration mode of technology with capital, institutions, social organizations, and public governance systems after it lands in society. Artificial intelligence also applies this law. Artificial intelligence can not only improve the efficiency of production and operation in the whole society, but may also give rise to a new structural wealth gap due to excessive concentration of computing power and data resources, as well as imbalanced distribution of benefits. This means that issues related to artificial intelligence are not just technical issues, but also complex social governance issues.
One of the core social issues arising from artificial intelligence is the fair distribution of technological dividends. Throughout history, technological innovation does not naturally achieve universal fairness. In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, machines greatly improved production efficiency, but most of the newly added wealth flowed to a minority group that controlled machines and capital; In the future, humanity will rely on improving the labor security system, popularizing public education, building a social security system, optimizing public governance rules, gradually adjusting the adaptation relationship between technology and society, and allowing more ordinary people to share the fruits of industrial civilization development. In the era of artificial intelligence, we are facing the same problem: it is an objective fact that artificial intelligence can significantly improve the operating efficiency of various industries, but how to allocate the incremental value created by efficiency improvement is a deeper and more critical proposition than technology research and development itself.
If society only regards artificial intelligence as a tool to compress labor costs and simply measures the full value of human beings based on efficiency, artificial intelligence will exacerbate structural contradictions in society; But if we position artificial intelligence as an empowering tool that amplifies human capabilities and broadens innovation boundaries, it will become the core driving force behind overall social progress. Therefore, exploring artificial intelligence should not only focus on the technological limits, but also consider how to make the value created by artificial intelligence benefit a wider range of social groups.
4、 Artificial intelligence is reshaping a completely new social power structure
The core of competition in previous technological changes has always revolved around the competition for physical resources, while in the era of artificial intelligence, the focus of competition has shifted towards two core competencies: organizational intelligence and governance intelligence. Every round of technological revolution will give rise to a new social power structure: in the agricultural era, land ownership determines social class; In the industrial era, capital and production machinery became the core of competition; In the Internet era, data and online platforms have the right to speak; In the era of artificial intelligence, computing power, massive data, mature models, professional technical talents, and intelligent infrastructure have become new core scarce resources. Those who master these resources will have stronger intelligent production and output capabilities.
In addition, artificial intelligence has given rise to a new power - the power of technological interpretation. The entities that can participate in defining security standards, delineating reasonable boundaries, and screening priority development directions will directly influence the development path of artificial intelligence technology. This means that future competition will not only exist between enterprises, but also involve countries, industries, and various social organizations. The main body with long-term core competitiveness not only holds top-notch technology, but also has the ability to transform technological advantages into driving force for the development of the whole society. Based on this, artificial intelligence governance cannot be limited to technical security control alone, but also needs to simultaneously coordinate multiple dimensions such as economic structural adjustment, new talent cultivation, social adaptation transformation, and public governance upgrading.
5、 In the era of artificial intelligence, the most scarce core capability is governance intelligence
By tracing the development trajectory of major technological breakthroughs in humanity, a common problem that runs through the entire process can be found: when a new and powerful force is born, do humans have the matching ability to control it. During the popularization stage of steam engines, humans established a complete industrial management system to adapt to machine production; After the popularization of the Internet, countries have gradually established digital space governance rules; Faced with the new intelligent force of artificial intelligence that can participate in cognitive production, the complexity of governance challenges that humans need to deal with is unprecedented.
There is no fixed and singular development direction for artificial intelligence. The same technological system can empower the medical industry, improve diagnosis and treatment efficiency, but it may also be abused to create new security risks; It can not only unleash human creativity, but also be used to strengthen control and widen social inequality. From this, it can be seen that the competition in the era of artificial intelligence is not only about the strength of model performance, but also about a mature and comprehensive governance system. Governance is not about constraining technological development, but about providing stable development expectations for technological innovation and building a solid foundation of social trust.
A complete governance system for artificial intelligence should include at least three major components: firstly, technical governance, which ensures the safety, reliability, and controllability of the entire process of artificial intelligence through normalized risk assessment, standardized security testing, and clear division of rights and responsibilities mechanisms; The second is economic governance, improving the rules for distributing incremental value of artificial intelligence, and avoiding the problem of excessive concentration of benefits caused by efficiency improvement; The third is civilized governance, clarifying the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence development and answering the underlying questions of who artificial intelligence should serve and why it should develop. There are many functions that technology can achieve, but not all technically feasible things have practical value. Measuring the maturity of civilization is never about how powerful tools humans have created, but about whether humans have the ability to define the scope and goals of tool use.
6、 The biggest risk in the AI era is not that machines are approaching humans, but that humans are being assimilated by machine logic
In the context of the development of artificial intelligence, what humans need to improve synchronously is not only the technical ability to operate and use intelligent tools, but also the comprehensive literacy to independently define development goals, judge value choices, and bear the consequences of decision-making. The core contradiction we need to be wary of in the future is never whether artificial intelligence can fully replace humans, but whether humans can maintain a complete and independent personality and value judgments with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The current society highly values efficiency, speed, quantitative prediction, and process optimization. While these standards are essential capabilities for modern development, if all values in society are measured solely by a single efficiency indicator, a large number of precious things that cannot be quantified will gradually be overlooked, including human creativity, emotional connections between people, multicultural values, moral bottom lines and sense of responsibility, and rich and authentic life experiences. Technology can assist humans in solving various practical problems, but it can never judge for humanity: which problems are worth investing resources to solve, which development directions are worth long-term cultivation, and what kind of future is worth the collective efforts of the whole society. This is also the fundamental reason why humans must re-examine their unique value in the era of artificial intelligence.
7、 The core of future competition is the comprehensive ability to control intelligence
In the face of the wave of artificial intelligence development, society should avoid two extreme perceptions: one is the theory of technological omnipotence, which believes that artificial intelligence can solve all social problems; The other is the theory of technological disaster, which unilaterally judges that artificial intelligence will inevitably bring various social crises. A more rational and mature attitude is to objectively identify potential risks while firmly grasping the opportunities brought by technological development.
In the future, humans should not only act as users of artificial intelligence, but also become designers of rules and organizers of resources in the era of intelligence. This comprehensive ability includes multiple dimensions: the ability to independently propose core issues with practical significance, rationally judge the correct direction of technological development, coordinate and integrate various technologies and industrial resources, and actively assume social responsibilities brought about by the landing of technology. Artificial intelligence can quickly generate standardized answers, but screening and defining which questions are worth exploring in depth is always an inalienable responsibility of humanity.
In summary, the development of artificial intelligence ultimately tests humanity itself
The development process of artificial intelligence is essentially a major choice that concerns the direction of future civilization. On the one hand, it tests the technological ability of humans to develop and manufacture intelligent systems, and on the other hand, it tests the governance ability of humans to coordinate and control intelligent forces. The truly thought-provoking core issue has never been whether artificial intelligence can surpass humans in terms of capabilities, but whether humans still possess the autonomous ability to define development directions, fairly distribute technological dividends, and create spiritual value as machine intelligence continues to grow stronger.
Technology is always just a stage carrier of civilization development, not the ultimate destination of civilization. The true progress of civilization does not lie in creating high-performance tools, but in the ability of humanity to build a set of ideological systems, institutional norms, and responsibility frameworks that match new forces. The civilization that can lead the times in the future may not necessarily have the world's top artificial intelligence technology, but it will definitely have the comprehensive ability to control intelligence, anchor development direction, and unite the common values of the whole society.
July 30, 2026
(Reported by Hong Kong Radio and Television Station)