--- title: "Harvard Professor Warns That AI Execs Are Pushing World Toward Factory Farming of Humans" description: "The Harvard professor and historian Jill Lepore warns that tech elites are building a future where we're ruled by automated AI overlords." date: "2026-08-25" modified: "2026-08-25" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/harvard-professor-ai-factory-farming-humans" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Ethics" --- # Harvard Professor Warns That AI Execs Are Pushing World Toward Factory Farming of Humans ![Several disembodied mannequin arms are hanging from chains in a dimly lit space with a red hue. The arms are glossy and arranged closely together, suspended by strings attached to circular hooks at the top. The background is dark, emphasizing the eerie and surreal atmosphere.]() We're racing towards a future where AI enables the "factory farming of humans," a Harvard professor warns — if tech elites get their way, at least. In a [new episode]() of *The New York Time's* "Hard Fork" podcast, the historian Jill Lepore discusses her idea of an "artificial state" that's supplanting the traditional nation state, and particular constitutional democracy, with one that erases human autonomy. In this emerging world order, government is conducted "not by the consent of people but by machines that are making decisions," she explained on the podcast. And those machines, of course, are owned by corporations. We aren't living in the artificial state quite yet, Lepore stresses, but it's something that's being built and realized around us. And crucially, it's also a fantasy held by certain influential elites who believe their power should supersede the actual government and the voters who decide how it's run. "The rhetoric that comes out of this particular historical moment is really about the evanescence of modern liberal democracy, constitutional democracy," she said. The elites pushing this rhetoric aren't "interested in what the people want," she added. "Because actually, what the people want is not to have AI and not to have data centers. So that's the crisis." Lepore explores the idea in depth in her upcoming book "[The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State]()." She was inspired by a simple question: in our current world where you're forced to talk to an AI to get answers, ranging from when you call in to ask about an appointment or talk to a company's support chatbot on its website, "who decided this is a way we should be living?" The artificial state is a sort of backsliding, in which more and more of the state's functions are now being replaced by corporations that own and control our digital communications infrastructure. How we get our news, and information on elections and who to vote for, is all being mediated by these powerful groups — through technologies like the TV and radio, once, and now social media being the increasingly dominant medium. The digital communication our lives are now structured around have a powerful isolating effect. In her 2024 [piece for *The New Yorker*]() where she initially explored the idea that would later become her book, Lepore described the artificial state as the "factory farming of public life, the sorting and segmenting, the isolation and alienation, the destruction of human community." The artificial state isn't purely driven by AI, but it's certainly being accelerated by it. People [are asking ChatGPT about who to vote for](), rather than talking to their neighbors, local officials, or experts. The political messages they're seeing, meanwhile, are probably in part [being written with AI](). Decisions at every level [are being made with the assistance of thinking machines](). AI is also [entrenching surveillance](), processing the mountains of data that is being gathered on all of us. One nefarious aspect of the pro-AI rhetoric coming out of Silicon Valley is that it frames AI as an inevitability. But Lepore argued that this brand of fatalism is a "bogus premise," itself nestled on top of several more dubious propositions. One we hear endlessly is that regulation stifles innovation, so the government should take the handbrake off AI development. The other is that technology always advances democracy, which assures us that all of the very real threats to democracy AI poses in the present will magically sort themselves out. Neither of those are true, Lepore says, and you have to look no further than how similar promises were made for technologies in the recent past. "So now, the AI people come back with the same argument that was made about the internet — the personal computer, the internet, and social media," she said in the interview. **More on AI:** [*Trump Says You’re a Rube If You Don’t Want a Data Center in Your Backyard*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()