As 2025 winds down, it seems fair to say that the rise of AI and authoritarianism are two social forces that are combining to be defining features of our time.
That’s not really news, I suppose. But it seems like this year something shifted, at least such that AI is no longer a novelty used by a tech savvy few.
It’s embedding ever deeper in our society, our politics, and in some cases our souls.
I got a more functional down-to-earth view of AI use earlier this week when I interviewed Sarah Wells, the CEO and founder of breast pump bags business based in Fairfax.
I was speaking to Wells for a story about holiday shopping, something she could speak to as a small business owner and a mom of two. Wells told me how AI was helping her save money on both those fronts.
As a shopper, she used AI to track products’ price histories to make sure the “deals” she was being offered were actually good. And, as she’s had to cut back on costs because of the Trump administration’s costly tariffs, she now uses AI for bookkeeping. Before she was paying a company to do it for her.
Not so scary stuff, right? It was a reminder to me that AI is a tool. One that’s more common than I realized. It can be used in ways that make our lives easier.
The rub is whether the added ease AI brings to our lives comes with added benefits for working people—or if we’ll simply devolve into a techno-authoritarian state.
No small fight, but it’s one we’ll likely spend the rest of our lives engaged in.
