Preserving Digital Freedom for Future Generations in the A.I. Era
Over-dependence on technology can cause us to lose our sense of self-reliance. When we depend on technological systems to perform our most important work, and those systems fail or are compromised or are perhaps even maliciously turned against us, we are left without the skills to function independently.
What Does The Future Hold?
The A.I. era has created a tsunami of change in a few short years. The pace of change is so rapid, it leaves us little time to absorb and understand the sweeping transformation taking place under the surface in almost every area of economic and social life.
One aspect of this, where we can only begin to predict what the future may hold, is how the growth of artificial intelligence will affect the raising and educating of children.
Many are afraid. “Will our children have jobs?”; “Will A.I. usher in tyranny?”; “Can we ever trust anything we see or read again?”
In this future, the costs of raising food, labor, medical care, services and manufacturing goods will drive toward zero, where the marginal cost of materials plus hyper-abundant cheap energy will uplift humanity. “Hunger and poverty will be eliminated!” they contend.
It’s certainly a seductive vision, but its primary flaw is that it treats technology as a self-executing blueprint for society, ignoring the messy, unpredictable, and often irrational nature of human beings.
In this shiny future, who owns the robots, the AI, the energy grids, and the patents? If a handful of mega-corporations or an authoritarian state (or even a bunch of unaccountable bureaucrats) control the entire productive infrastructure, they can set the price of access.
The cost of producing a loaf of bread might be $0.01, but if that's the only source of bread, the corporation can charge $10 or whatever the controllers want. It depends on how benevolent they feel that day, and what their agenda is. There's no competition to keep things in check and drive prices down. This creates a neo-feudalism where the vast majority are completely dependent on a technocratic elite for their survival.
Timeless Principles and Human Rights
This is why we have to get the underlying principles right. Free markets, individual ownership, and decentralization and localization of power are so important to realize an optimal, amazing future for our children, communities and future generations. The technologies we choose to adopt must empower the individual at the core. The functional nature of the technology needs to protect our God-given, natural rights. Privacy, bodily autonomy, the freedom of expression and speech, the right to transact and enter contracts, the freedom of religion and so many others will become even more important in this increasingly technocratic future.
It’s impossible to predict where all of this is going, but we are at a time of choosing, and we need to firmly focus on what we value and return to a place of first principles. Managing this change isn’t something that politicians or experts have under control. We must be proactively self-govern, lead our families, pursue truth and stay involved in the civic process.
When it comes to enabling and protecting the future generations, there is a lot we can say about all of this, but I’ll focus on three key areas to round out this essay.
Keep Teaching Skills
A major component and risk of rising automation is "deskilling." It's the process by which skilled labor is broken down into simplified, repeatable tasks, reducing the need for human judgment, craftsmanship, and expertise. In the context of AI, cognitive and decision-making functions are transferred from humans to machines. The effect can be deceptively subtle and gradual, but we can readily see how this will lead to the atrophy of human ability over time.
For today's children and young people, the risk isn't atrophy; the risk is that they never obtain a set of independent skills and a personal, internalized knowledge base with the wisdom to use it. Avoiding this outcome must ultimately be achieved in the home and in small local settings like sports teams, churches, and classrooms. If we are going to preserve our liberty, it’s going to happen locally.
Educating children must shift to value principles and wisdom, that AI cannot replicate: critical thinking, foundational knowledge, creativity, emotional intelligence, and moral judgment. Only then do we stand a chance of maintaining alignment, as we develop these technologies and use them for improving the world around us.
Destigmatize "Going Dark"
Right now, using encryption and privacy tools is often framed as something only criminals or people "with something to hide" do. This kind of characterization only serves Big Government and Big Tech. Let's normalize privacy at every level. Using a password manager, a privacy-focused phone, an encrypted messenger, and a VPN should be seen as the equivalent of locking your front door. It's not a sign of suspicious activity. Let’s stop falling for this lie.
Promote Digital Literacy as a Core Skill: People can't utilize (or fight when necessary) what they don't understand. Let’s teach the next generation not just how to use apps and technology, but how to keep them thoroughly within their control. Understanding the business models of surveillance is the first step to resisting them.
Encourage and Practice Craftsmanship
The process of becoming a craftsman—of dedicating oneself to a skill and achieving a state of "flow"—is a deeply fulfilling human experience. Work provides structure, identity, and a sense of contributing to something larger than oneself. Becoming an expert and pursuing excellence takes this to another level.
A.I. tools feel almost “magical.” Once we get past this “wow” effect, we can readily see these tools hold the potential for empowerment. They remove friction and expand the canvas for what we can imagine. However, our view is that there will always be a place for true craftsmanship. A graphic designer, engineer or video editor who uses AI to generate initial concepts or to perform repetitive tasks can then spend their time on the nuanced work of refinement and artistry.
By designing technology to augment skills rather than replace them, we preserve our own humanity.
It Comes Down to Free Will
The critical thread running through all of these is agency. When technology is designed to serve human freedom, it expands our horizons. When it's designed to constrain or replace it, it leads to deskilling and dependency. The goal is not to create a world where humans are obsolete, but one where we are empowered by our tools to become the most capable, knowledgeable, and humane version of ourselves.
As we at Unplugged move into 2026, we feel even more resolve and urgency to fulfill our mission to build technologies that put individual privacy and freedom first. We are grateful to our customers, followers and investors who share this vision.