By Rob Eschmann

The news cycle in 2026 feels straight out of a dystopian science fiction film.

New AI models are so good at hacking companies hesitate to release them to the public, and the construction of new data centers force people off their land, pollute the environment, and take up natural resources as citizen water sources run dry.

We are witnessing the rapid expansion of an AI-enabled surveillance state, and even have less tech-forward trends that reek of Orwell’s 1984, like widespread book banning and masked men arresting people and sending them to overseas prisons without due process.

Given these disturbing trends, how do we ensure we don’t end up living in a post-apocalyptic film?

Walter Mosley’s 2001 science fiction novel, Futureland (which was re-released as an audiobook in 2026) is a collection of interrelated short stories that explore a world controlled by technocrats, with multi-national corporations wielding more power than nation states. Its prescient takes on the relationship between advanced technology, power, and inequality provide insights for how to navigate the inevitable challenges on the horizon.

One detail from Futureland that feels like an eerily accurate prediction is that children are taught AI prompts in school in order to make them more effective corporate factory workers. Their resulting lack of critical thinking skills is preferred. Twenty years after the book was published, as leading tech companies mandate that employees use AI and include AI mastery as a benchmark for evaluation, this type of curriculum doesn’t seem so farfetched.

Many industry leaders believe that AI will lead to widespread unemployment, with AI and robots replacing white collar workers and factory workers alike. With these type of society-breaking consequences on the horizon, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, wrote about the need for new forms of universal basic income, financed by corporate and property taxes.

In Futureland millions of unemployed citizens live in underground dormitories where they are fed rice and beans three times a day and rarely allowed to journey to the surface to see the sun. Corporate employees live in fear of missing work (even when sick with and spreading a deadly virus) because if they lose their jobs they will be sent underground.

This type of universal basic income, born out of science fiction, feels more consistent with the real-world history of how unregulated corporations treat workers, than does Altman’s idyllic musing.

For example, in the 1800s and early 1900s sharecroppers and coal miners were trapped by employers and forced to buy goods from plantation and company stores via credit or scrip. Child labor was unregulated and many children worked overtime in hazardous jobs.

It took decades of labor organizing, from union strikes, to legislative pressure and even violent struggles, for workers to win the types of victories we take for granted today, like the 40-hour work week, sick and vacation days, compensation for injuries on the job, and retirement plans.

The examples of sharecropping, coal mining, and factory work are of course more friendly than their predecessors, slavery and colonization. Unregulated capitalists have historically wanted to give workers the minimum possible pay and benefits and would prefer to steal resources and not pay workers at all if we allowed it.

Filmmakers Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell’s 2026 documentary, The AI Doc, explores the future as envisioned by a host of AI stakeholders, technologists, and policy makers. Half of the talking heads in the documentary believe AI will save the world, creating cures for diseases, climate change, and even death, with some suggesting a human-tech merging or “evolution” that will allow us to live forever.

In Mosley’s Futureland, Dr. Kismet, the leader of the most powerful corporation on the planet, has a one-of-a-kind AI device under his skin that provides him with immediate access to all human knowledge and lightweight fast processing power. When Folio Johnson, a lowly private detective, reveals he has an AI-enabled eye, people are astounded, as such invaluable devices are not found amongst the common folk. Folio reveals that he lost his eye saving Dr. Kismet’s life and was given the upgrade as a gift.

This reveals part of what the AI optimists are missing. Just because technology exists, we shouldn’t assume that it will be shared. Pharmaceutical companies are less likely to develop drugs for diseases that are less profitable or endemic to poor communities. What makes folks think access to AI advances will be more democratic? Even today, access to many AI tools is protected by a pay wall, with more advanced tiers costing more money.

Futureland opens as a genius child, Ptolemy Bent, is going to be removed from his home unless his family can afford a computer and internet terminal with a six-figure annual subscription cost. His uncle ends up selling body parts to pay for the advanced homeschooling setup, a gruesome investment that pays off decades later as Ptolemy leads the tech-savvy resistance against corporate oppression.

Today the Internet is widely accessible, and this scenario feels farfetched. But in Ukraine, where the military relies on international funding and Starlink for internet connectivity, we are witnessing the problems associated with complete dependence on private, profit-driven companies controlling the communications infrastructure.

Many experts contributing to The AI Doc believe AI will spark apocalyptic changes. They suggest that we are in the middle of an AI arms race, with companies and nation states throwing safeguards to the wind as they fight to be the first to develop a supreme artificial intelligence. This opens humans up to the worst possibilities of an AI future, from literal apocalypse if AI agents are given control of nuclear weapons, to societal collapse if an AI workforce leads to mass unemployment.

To balance the viewpoints of the optimists and the criers of apocalypse, the filmmakers call the viewer to action, suggesting that the future of AI, and the world, will be what we make of it. It is our responsibility to develop and deploy AI in a human-centered way.

But what mechanisms are we meant to use to direct the future of AI? Voting? Protest?

The Supreme Court recently gutted the Voting Rights Act, making it easier for states to engage in racist gerrymandering and making it more difficult for us to have free elections. Some activists documenting and protesting people being arrested and deported without due process have been told they were being added to a database, and government officials have confirmed plans to go after dissenting citizens. This too is echoed in Mosley’s world, as Americans are sent to offshore prisons (where their “rights” are nonexistent) to become lab rats implanted with new devices that control human thoughts and behaviors.

There are a few examples of state-level protections for people in the AI age, like the California executive order to prepare for economic changes due to AI, and a court in China ruling it was illegal to fire a worker and replace them with AI. But these legal and policy decisions are developing much more slowly than advances in AI.

Here we can again learn from the resistance in Futureland. Genius Ptolemy Bent creates the world’s most powerful AI to protect and empower the resistance. While we don’t have an all-powerful AI to protect us, the actions taken by the AI reflect age-old organizing strategies.

For instance, one of the most gripping stories in Futureland follows Neil Hawthorne, a factory worker with acute anxiety who is on the verge of being labelled unemployable and sent to permanently live underground. Hawthorne is reassigned to a group that seems to operate outside of the normal rules of the corporation, where he is trained in critical thinking skills and recruited to join the resistance.

It turns out his reassignment was orchestrated by the AI, who invested in Neil’s reeducation, thereby increasing his capacity to be a change agent.

This strategy, building the capacity of normal, everyday people to become leaders, is central to the organizing tradition. For decades before the Civil Rights Movement, organizer Ella Baker invested in human capital in the Black community, training a network of leaders poised to engage in strategic direct actions that challenged oppressive systems.

Of all the elements of Mosley’s world that seem to predict the future, perhaps this is the most important. We need to look to yesterday’s analog strategies, not just the technologies of tomorrow, to discover the keys to generating the collective capacity to overcome overwhelming AI-enabled systems of domination.