Durkheim, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Human Solidarity

By Arthur Bremaud

This commentary aims to introduce to you the question surrounding what kind of society are we becoming more efficient at creating?

More than a century before the arrival of artificial intelligence, the French sociologist Émile Durkheim examined a similarly transformative period. Industrialisation, urbanisation, and the expansion of modern capitalism were reorganising the structure of society. People were moving away from small, relatively homogeneous communities and entering increasingly specialised economies in which individuals performed narrower and more distinct roles.

Durkheim’s concern was not entirely economic. Rather, he wanted to understand what happened to social connection when the structure of society changed.

His work therefore provides a useful framework for thinking about the overlap of society and artificial intelligence today. AI may represent another major transformation in the organisation of labour and social life. It could provide people with more time for care, participation, and community. Yet, paradoxically, it could deepen isolation by replacing further areas of human interaction with automated systems.

The question is not only whether AI will change society. It is whether that change will strengthen or weaken the bonds that hold society together.

From Mechanical to Organic Solidarity

Durkheim argued that traditional societies were largely held together through what he called mechanical solidarity. Individuals were connected because they often shared similar beliefs, occupations, traditions, and ways of life. Social cohesion emerged from a shared sense of resemblance.

I like to imagine this visually,  as a choir. Its strength comes from its many singers singing their parts. Individual variation may be limited, but the shared rhythm and harmony provides a strong sense of collective identity.

Modern societies, however, function differently. Industrialisation produced a greater division of labour. Rather than performing similar roles, individuals became increasingly specialised. One person became a cook, a physician, another an engineer, another a teacher, researcher, driver, programmer or administrator. Durkheim described the cohesion of these societies as organic solidarity. People no longer united primarily because they were similar, but because they depended on one another.

Coming back to my previous analogy, modern societies therefore resemble orchestras rather than choirs. Each person may play a different instrument and have different solos, but the performance remains possible only because those differences are coordinated. Specialisation does not necessarily destroy social unity. In Durkheim’s account, it can create a new and more complex form of interdependence.

However, an orchestra requires more than individual technical ability. It requires shared timing, mutual awareness, and a common score. And this is where the risks of our modernity begin to appear.

Specialisation, Capitalism, and “Anomie”

The transition towards industrial and capitalist societies did not automatically produce the stable organic solidarity that he discussed. This originates from a simple mechanism:

Individuals might become highly valuable within the economy while feeling increasingly disconnected from society. Their work may have a market function without providing a sense of belonging, purpose, or collective identity.

Durkheim used the concept of anomie to describe a condition in which social norms and forms of regulation become weakened or unclear. Anomie is not traditional loneliness. It is a broader form of social disorientation, occurring when individuals no longer feel sufficiently connected to the expectations, relationships, and institutions that once gave their life, a clear direction.

Modern capitalism has intensified this tension. It has created extraordinary levels of innovation, mobility, and specialisation, yet it has also encouraged society to measure individuals through productivity, “success”, consumption, and economic output.

In such a system, people may be literally connected through transactions without being truly connected through community.

Often, deliveries may arrive at our door without us having to speak to another person. A meeting may take place without anyone entering the same room. A person may live among millions while remaining socially invisible in these modern metropoles..

And although this initially seems like the fruits of capitalism and innovation, underneath it all, we become more and more socially distant.

Durkheim’s work is therefore not an argument that traditional society was necessarily better. Rather, it is a warning that economic interdependence alone is insufficient for a “successful” society.

Artificial Intelligence as a New Division of Labour

And yet again, Artificial intelligence is now transforming the division of labour.

Tasks once performed by individuals can increasingly be delegated to algorithms. AI can summarise documents, generate reports, schedule appointments, translate conversations…

To me, this creates two possible paths.

The first path is one where AI, in essence, could make human qualities more valuable.

If repetitive administrative work is reduced, doctors may spend more time listening to patients (subtle foreshadowing). Teachers may spend more time mentoring students. Social workers may spend more time understanding families rather than completing forms. Individuals may have more time to participate as volunteers or in sports, cultural groups, and civic life.

Under this model, AI transforms systems like electricity or machines once did. Here, technology remains largely invisible, allowing the us, humans to become more visible and valuable.

However, although I do not want to sound like a “luddite” (person opposed to new technologies) there is also a second path,

AI may be used not to protect human interaction, but to remove it. A conversation may become a chatbot exchange. A clinical consultation may become a series of automated prompts. Education may become increasingly individualised and screen-based. Work may become more fragmented, remote, and detached from shared institutions.

This would create a paradox: society could become more technically connected while individuals become less socially embedded, the same risk Durkheim talked about 150 years ago.

The central issue is therefore not whether AI is beneficial or harmful in itself. The issue is the social purpose for which it is designed.

Social Prescribing, the future?

Social prescribing begins from the recognition that health is not produced exclusively through medical treatment or technologies. It is also influenced by our relationships, participations, physical activity, purpose, belonging…

A person experiencing loneliness, inactivity, stress, or social disconnection may not necessarily require another prescription or clinical intervention. They may benefit from being more connected to their community through walking groups, sports club, arts programme, volunteering opportunity, community organisation, or peer-support network.

In this sense, social prescribing responds directly to a Durkheimian problem. 

Conclusion

Durkheim’s work reminds us that major technological and economic transformations are also moral and social transformations. Changes in the division of labour do not merely affect what people do. They affect how people understand their place and value within society and how these relate to one another.

Artificial intelligence may allow society to automate many of the tasks that currently consume human time. The significance of this development will depend on what happens now to the extra time that we are granted.

The future of AI should therefore not only be evaluated by the speed of its outputs or the number of models or the scale of its economic contribution. It should also be evaluated by whether it strengthens the social fabric around us.

Durkheim understood that society is not simply a collection of individuals. We are a network of relationships, obligations, institutions, carrying often shared meanings.

AI may help us organise that network more effectively.

But we need to remind ourselves that this network must continue to exist in the first place.