This book highlights some of the critical crossroads – moments when decisions about the future relationship between humans and digital technologies must be made – that societies face in light of the continuous development and adoption of artificial intelligence.

As modern societies undergo profound transformative processes due to artificial intelligence and related technologies, a linear view of inevitable “progress” and growth increasingly dominates public discourse. This book offers a reversal, challenging deterministic narratives, mapping the complex crossroads where future trajectories should be shaped rather than passively accepted.

Examining a wide range of fields such as education, heritage, creativity, biological and technological limits of humans, work, war, and space colonization, both dominant (typically progressive) and alternative (critical) ways of framing the present and the future are sketched, identifying the choices that need to be made.

The book reveals the underlying tendencies and emphasizes the recurring need to make value-based choices regarding our further development, not only as societies but also as humanity, as well as concerning regulatory decisions. It illustrates how decisions in these areas are shaped by deeply embedded intellectual, ideological, political, ethical, and economic assumptions, often hidden behind rhetoric of necessity.

These crossroads are not merely technical or economic choices, but ethical and social: Between maximizing efficiency and ensuring diversity; between treating technological capabilities as imperatives and critically evaluating them; between ethical blindness and care.

By clarifying the available options, the book calls on readers to take an active role in shaping the future of societies and humanity. This interdisciplinary and creative text will benefit postgraduate and scholarly readers working on artificial intelligence in the fields of media and communication, cultural studies, sociology, and cultural anthropology.

The open access version of this book is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This edition is part of the project “Enhancement of Research and Development Activities of Vytautas Kavolis Interdisciplinary Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities (SOCMTEP).” The project is funded by the Lithuanian Ministry of Research and the Ministry of Education, Science, and Sports of the Republic of Lithuania.