Ethics, society, education and culture in the age of AI: A critical interdisciplinary review

Artificial intelligence has moved beyond its role as a technological innovation and increasingly influences how contemporary societies organize knowledge, labour, governance, culture, and public life. Instead of approaching AI as a self-contained computational achievement, this article examines it as a multidimensional civilizational phenomenon whose consequences are inseparable from the ethical, political, and cultural structures within which intelligent systems are conceived, deployed, and governed. The analysis demonstrates that the rise of algorithmic systems simultaneously redistributes authority, reshapes economic relations, transforms educational practice and reconfigures the production of cultural memory. Equally significant is the finding that the social risks commonly associated with AI, including algorithmic bias, labour displacement, computational misinformation and the erosion of democratic deliberation, do not arise from technological autonomy itself but from historically situated institutional choices, unequal data regimes and contested structures of political and economic power. Ultimately, the future of artificial intelligence will be determined less by advances in computational capability than by humanity’s continuing capacity to ensure that technological innovation remains subordinate to the enduring values that sustain collective life.