The Rise of Techno-Neo-Feudalism: When AI Creates a New Peasant Class, By Brian Simpson

We stand at a crossroads that future historians may mark as the moment when the promise of democratic capitalism gave way to something far more sinister: a techno-feudal order where artificial intelligence serves as the great divider, separating a small technological aristocracy from a vast population of economic serfs.

The signs are everywhere, yet we barely acknowledge them. While we celebrate AI breakthroughs and marvel at technological progress, we're witnessing the emergence of a new class structure that bears an unsettling resemblance to medieval feudalism, but with algorithms instead of armies, data instead of land, and code instead of divine right.

At the apex of this emerging order sits a handful of tech oligarchs who control the means of digital production. Unlike the industrial barons of the past, these new lords don't merely own factories or resources, they own the very infrastructure of thought and communication. Google processes our questions, Amazon anticipates our needs, Microsoft powers our work, and Meta shapes our social connections. These platforms have become the digital equivalent of feudal estates, with billions of users as their tenant farmers, generating value through data while owning none of the land they till.

The concentration of wealth among this tech aristocracy is breathtaking. A few dozen individuals now possess more resources than entire nations, and their wealth grows exponentially as AI amplifies their control over information, commerce, and social interaction. They are becoming the new feudal lords, not through conquest but through indispensability.

Supporting this aristocracy is a new clerical class, the algorithm priests who design, maintain, and interpret the AI systems that increasingly govern our lives. These are the machine learning engineers, data scientists, and AI researchers who occupy prestigious positions in universities and tech companies. Like the medieval clergy, they possess specialised knowledge that the masses cannot access or understand, and they increasingly serve as intermediaries between the digital lords and the common people.

This technical clergy doesn't just build systems; they embed values, biases, and power structures into code that affects millions of lives. They decide what content we see, which job applications get reviewed, who receives loans, and even who gets matched on dating apps. Their algorithms have become the new scripture, interpreted by a select few but binding upon all.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is systematically displacing the middle class, the modern equivalent of the medieval yeomanry. Unlike previous technological revolutions that created new types of work as they destroyed old ones, AI threatens to automate away human labour faster than it can create new opportunities.

The pattern is accelerating across industries. AI can now write code, draft legal documents, create marketing campaigns, analyse financial data, diagnose medical conditions, and even produce creative content. Each advancement eliminates not just individual jobs but entire categories of work that once provided middle-class incomes and social mobility.

The professionals who spent years acquiring specialised knowledge, accountants, radiologists, paralegals, journalists, analysts, find themselves competing not just with each other but with systems that never sleep, never demand raises, and improve continuously. The very education and expertise that once guaranteed security now feels increasingly obsolete.

As AI eliminates middle-class jobs faster than the economy can create new ones, we're witnessing the emergence of a vast class of digital serfs. These are the gig workers, the content creators dependent on platform algorithms, the warehouse workers monitored by AI systems, the delivery drivers guided by apps they don't own and can't control.

This new peasant class doesn't own the means of production, they don't even own their own data. They work on platforms owned by the digital aristocracy, subject to algorithmic management systems that can change their income, working conditions, or employment status without notice or appeal. They are economically dependent on systems they cannot influence, much like medieval serfs were dependent on their lords' lands.

The gig economy, once celebrated as liberation from traditional employment, increasingly resembles feudal labor arrangements. Workers provide their own tools (cars, phones, computers) and bear all the risks, while platforms extract value and make the rules. The promise of flexibility has become the reality of insecurity.

Perhaps most troubling is how AI-driven automation is destroying the rungs of the economic ladder. Traditional career paths that allowed people to work their way up from entry-level positions to middle-class security are disappearing. AI can now perform many of the routine tasks that once served as training grounds for human workers.

Young people face a cruel paradox: they need experience to get good jobs, but AI has eliminated many of the jobs that provide that experience. Meanwhile, the remaining high-paying positions require increasingly specialised skills that are expensive to acquire and may become obsolete within years.

The result is a bifurcated labor market with high-skill, high-pay positions for the technical elite and low-skill, low-pay service jobs for everyone else, with very little in between. The broad middle class that defined the post-war era is being hollowed out, leaving society divided between digital lords and digital peasants.

Technology companies promote the narrative that AI will democratise opportunity and empower individuals. They point to tools that help small businesses compete with large corporations, platforms that allow anyone to become a content creator, and AI assistants that augment human capabilities.

But this narrative obscures a fundamental reality: while AI tools may become more accessible, control over the underlying systems remains concentrated in the hands of a few massive corporations. We may all have access to AI-powered tools, but we don't own the data centres, control the algorithms, or set the terms of service that govern their use.

It's like being given access to a lord's mill while the lord still owns the mill, sets the prices, and can deny access at will. The appearance of empowerment masks the reality of dependence.

This trajectory toward techno-feudalism is not inevitable, but reversing it will require recognising the threat and taking deliberate action. We need new forms of economic organisation that ensure the benefits of AI are broadly shared rather than concentrated among a technological elite.

Most importantly, we need to reject the narrative that technological progress automatically equals human progress. The question isn't whether AI will advance, it will. The question is whether that advancement will serve human flourishing or create new forms of domination.

We stand at a moment of profound choice. We can sleepwalk into a techno-feudal future where a small digital aristocracy controls the levers of economic power while the majority struggles for scraps, or we can consciously design systems that harness AI's benefits for the common good.

The window for choice is narrowing. Each day that AI systems become more powerful and more central to economic life, the harder it becomes to ensure they serve democratic rather than aristocratic ends. The new peasant class is already forming around us, the question is whether we'll recognize it in time to prevent our own enrolment.

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Neo-Feudalism-Warning-Global-Middle/dp/1641770945