06-23-2026FAST COMPANY IMPACT COUNCIL

AI has a single story problem

Why we need to move away from the dominant narrative to one of shared agency.

[Photo: Getty Images]

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of top leaders and experts who pay dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership, and more.

We’re being sold a peculiar future. The story goes like this: Build larger frontier AI models, put them everywhere, make them do everything. Cover the planet (and then space) with data centers. In this dystopian future, we are burning barrels of fuel to micro-dose on dopamine from synthetic intimacy.

Writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warned us about “the danger of a single story”—how flattening a people, a place, or an idea into one narrative robs it of complexity, and ultimately of truth. The dominant AI story is about creating........

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