The dominant story about artificial intelligence is a story of scale. Bigger models. Bigger data centers. More computing power. More energy. More capital. And behind it all, a relatively small group of technology companies competing to build increasingly powerful systems that could reshape business, work and society. Jeremy Rifkin sees another possibility.
In his newly released book, Rescuing the Future: Reimagining Artificial Intelligence in a World on the Edge, Rifkin challenges the assumption that the future of AI must inevitably be defined by centralized computing infrastructure and a handful of enormous technology companies. Instead, he envisions an alternative built around distributed computing, connected communities, small- and medium-sized businesses, cooperatives, the Internet of Things and networks organized closer to the places where people actually live and work. He calls it the “People’s AI.” It is an ambitious thesis, and some of Rifkin’s predictions go considerably further than the technological landscape we can see today. But that may also be what makes the book timely. At a moment when businesses and governments are racing to determine what AI can do, Rifkin is asking a more fundamental question: What kind of artificial intelligence—and what kind of society—are we actually building?
Beyond Big Tech’s Vision of AI
Much of today’s AI conversation begins with a familiar architecture. Enormous quantities of data and computing power are concentrated in large-scale infrastructure, while the most advanced systems are developed and controlled primarily by major technology companies. Rifkin doesn’t argue that this model simply disappears. His thesis is that another technological architecture could develop alongside it—and ultimately become a significant alternative. In Rescuing the Future, he describes a People’s AI emerging through distributed computing and Internet of Things networks connected to businesses, cooperatives and communities. Rather than intelligence residing primarily in distant centralized systems, Rifkin envisions more of it operating through interconnected networks closer to the economic, social and environmental systems generating the information. The distinction is about more than where computers are located. It raises questions about who controls technology, who benefits from it and what purposes artificial intelligence ultimately serves. That makes Rescuing the Future as much an argument about economic and social organization as it is a book about AI.
What Does “People’s AI” Actually Mean?
The easiest way to understand Rifkin’s idea is to stop imagining artificial intelligence solely as an increasingly powerful machine sitting somewhere in the cloud. His alternative is more distributed. Rifkin envisions businesses, cooperatives and communities using connected technologies and local computing resources while remaining linked through broader digital networks. He connects this technological architecture to what he calls bioregions—areas understood through their ecological relationships as well as conventional political or economic boundaries. In Rifkin’s vision, information and intelligence would move through these interconnected systems in ways that could help communities respond to changing conditions, manage resources and participate more directly in the technological infrastructure around them. The contrast he draws is therefore not simply big AI versus small AI.
It is centralized versus distributed. Ownership versus stewardship. Extraction versus adaptation. A technological system concentrated at the top versus one in which intelligence is spread more broadly through networks. Whether the People’s AI develops on anything approaching the scale Rifkin predicts remains an open question. Rifkin’s larger challenge, however, is harder to dismiss: Does artificial intelligence have to evolve according to the dominant model we see today, or are there fundamentally different ways to design the systems that will increasingly shape society?
The Philosophy Behind the Technology
To make his case, Rifkin reaches much further back than Silicon Valley. A central idea in Rescuing the Future is the distinction between what he calls “substance ontology” and “process ontology.” The terminology sounds academic, but the underlying idea can be explained much more simply. Ontology is essentially a philosophical question about what we believe reality is made of. Rifkin describes substance ontology as a worldview centered on separate, relatively fixed things—objects, property and resources that can be categorized, possessed and used. Process ontology instead emphasizes relationships, patterns, flows and constantly changing systems. From this perspective, the world is less a collection of isolated things than an evolving network of interactions.
Rifkin believes those different ways of understanding reality can lead toward very different technological futures. A system designed primarily around identifying, acquiring and optimizing resources may produce one kind of artificial intelligence. A system designed to understand changing relationships among communities, economies and natural systems may produce another. This is where Rifkin’s argument becomes larger than computing. He is asking whether the architecture of technology reflects assumptions about the world in which that technology operates—and whether changing those assumptions could change the technology itself.
A Debate Bigger Than Artificial Intelligence
Rifkin has spent much of his career examining moments when technological change spills beyond technology. AI, in his telling, cannot be separated neatly from energy, economics, work, climate, communities or the natural world. Decisions about technological infrastructure eventually become decisions about how societies organize themselves. That perspective also explains why Rifkin places considerable importance on generational change. In Rescuing the Future, he argues that younger generations may be particularly receptive to thinking about humanity as part of an interconnected living system rather than separate from it. In Rifkin’s view, greater emphasis on ecological relationships, stewardship and collective intelligence could influence not only how younger people use technology, but what kinds of technological systems they ultimately choose to build. It is a provocative argument rather than a settled demographic conclusion. But it reinforces one of the book’s central ideas: the future of AI will not be determined by technical capability alone. It will also be shaped by values.
Watch: Jeremy Rifkin Explains the Energy Internet
Rifkin’s argument in Rescuing the Future did not appear overnight. For years, he has been describing a shift from centralized industrial systems toward distributed, connected networks. Artificial intelligence has now become the latest—and perhaps most consequential—frontier in that transformation. The earlier discussion of distributed energy is useful precisely because it predates the current generative-AI boom. The technology is different, but the architecture of Rifkin’s thinking is recognizable: millions of participants connected through networks rather than economic and technological power flowing exclusively through centralized systems.
The Energy Internet Explained, with Jeremy Rifkin | Big Think
Rifkin Has Been Building Toward This Argument for Decades
For readers familiar with Jeremy Rifkin’s work, Rescuing the Future feels less like a sudden pivot toward artificial intelligence than another stage in a much longer intellectual project. In The End of Work, Rifkin examined how automation and technological change could transform employment. The Third Industrial Revolution explored the convergence of communications, energy and economic transformation. The Zero Marginal Cost Society extended that thinking into the Internet of Things, collaborative networks and an economy in which the marginal cost of producing and sharing certain goods and services could approach zero. More recently, The Age of Resilience challenged assumptions about efficiency, progress and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Now AI enters the story. Across these books, the technologies change, but Rifkin repeatedly returns to a similar question: What happens when a new technological infrastructure changes not simply what society can do, but how society organizes economic and social life? Artificial intelligence gives that question new urgency.
Watch: Jeremy Rifkin on The Zero Marginal Cost Society
Long before ChatGPT turned generative AI into an everyday subject, Rifkin was examining the Internet of Things, automation, collaborative commons and the possibility that connected technologies could distribute economic power in new ways. Those earlier arguments provide useful context for understanding why his latest book doesn’t treat AI as an isolated technological revolution. Rifkin places it inside a transformation he believes has been developing for decades.
The Zero Marginal Cost Society | Jeremy Rifkin | Talks at Google
What Kind of AI Future Are We Building?
For business leaders, this may be where Rescuing the Future becomes most interesting. Organizations are understandably focused on immediate AI questions. Which tools should we adopt? How can we improve productivity? Where can AI reduce costs? How will it affect employees? What risks need to be managed? Rifkin invites leaders to widen the lens. As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in organizations and economies, questions about AI increasingly become questions about infrastructure, ownership, data, energy, work and power. The decisions organizations make today may influence not only how effectively they use AI but the technological ecosystem in which they eventually operate.
How centralized should intelligence become? Who controls organizational data and the systems that learn from it? What happens to work as automation expands? How will technological infrastructure affect communities? Can efficiency and resilience coexist? What responsibilities accompany the deployment of systems capable of influencing increasingly large parts of economic and social life? Rifkin does not offer business leaders a simple five-step AI strategy, and that isn’t the value of Rescuing the Future. Its value lies in challenging the assumption that today’s technological trajectory is the only possible one. That is particularly important at a moment when the speed of AI development can make fundamental choices appear inevitable. They aren’t necessarily inevitable. Infrastructure gets designed. Business models get chosen. Policies get written. Organizations decide what they will automate, what they will centralize and what they will keep closer to employees, customers and communities. The future of AI is being built through those choices.
Jeremy Rifkin and the Future of AI
For decades, Jeremy Rifkin has explored the intersection of technology, economics, energy, society and the environment. He is the author of 22 bestselling books, with his work translated into more than 35 languages, and his ideas have contributed to international conversations about economic and technological transformation. That history gives his entry into the AI debate a distinctive perspective. Rather than asking only how organizations can deploy artificial intelligence more quickly, Rifkin asks leaders to consider what kind of technological infrastructure they ultimately want to inhabit—and what its consequences may be for businesses, workers, communities and the planet. Those questions make his latest work particularly relevant for leadership and technology conferences, AI and future-of-work programs, sustainability events, economic forums, public-policy audiences and global business meetings. The most interesting part of Rescuing the Future may ultimately be that readers do not have to accept every prediction in the book to engage with its central challenge. The prevailing conversation asks what artificial intelligence will become. Jeremy Rifkin is asking something different: What do we want it to become?
To explore Jeremy Rifkin’s keynote programs, speaking fee and availability for an upcoming conference or event, visit Jeremy Rifkin’s Speakers.com profile or contact Speakers.com for assistance booking him for your organization.
