Every few weeks, Artificial Intelligence seems to produce another headline. A new model. A larger investment. A faster processor. A company valued in the hundreds of billions. The conversation has become almost entirely centred on the race to build more powerful machines. I follow these developments with genuine interest. But I often find myself wondering whether we are all looking in the wrong direction.

History has a curious habit of reminding us that the inventors of transformative technologies are not always the ones who transform society. James Watt improved the steam engine. It was factories that transformed economies. The internet was built by engineers. It was entrepreneurs, educators, governments and ordinary citizens who changed the way we lived because of it.

Technology begins the story.

Institutions decide how the story ends.

That distinction has occupied my thoughts for some time. Perhaps because I spend more time thinking about government than algorithms. Perhaps because the questions that matter most are no longer technological. They are institutional. People often speak about bureaucracy as though it were an outdated mistake waiting to be dismantled. I see it differently. Modern government was designed for the world in which it existed. Information travelled slowly. Documents moved from one office to another because there was no practical alternative. Decisions climbed through layers of administration because knowledge itself........

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