This article was automatically translated from the original Turkish version.
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In a recent statement, Microsoft argued that artificial intelligence will grant individuals greater autonomy in the workplace, turning everyone into a “mini-boss” managing their own projects. The company contends that AI tools can enhance personal productivity and decision-making capacity, potentially dismantling traditional hierarchical structures. Yet this vision raises important questions: Why are we framing the future through a scenario in which everyone is independent and creative? What convinces Microsoft to embrace this optimistic future rather than one in which many face unemployment or work under more precarious conditions?
According to this optimistic assumption, AI tools will empower ordinary workers by giving them the chance to make creative decisions, personalize work processes, and design their own income models. In this vision, everyone becomes a boss. But this assumption overlooks the depth of existing economic and technological inequalities. Effective use of AI requires access to technical knowledge, capital, networks, and education. For those already possessing these resources, the opportunity to become a boss may indeed expand. Yet for the vast majority lacking such resources, AI could become a new mechanism for exclusion from the labor market or for being trapped in low-paid microtasks.
Thus, not everyone may become a boss in the age of artificial intelligence. Instead, it seems more likely that the existing economic order, built on entrenched inequalities, will use new technologies to reinforce itself. In this new version of the system, some will play the role of bosses while others are forced to settle for job fragments dictated by algorithms.
In fact, we have already begun to witness the first examples of this transformation.
Many individuals—Uber drivers, Amazon marketplace sellers, Etsy vendors—operate under the claim that they are their own bosses. Yet in reality, their work processes are largely determined by platform algorithms. Their incomes are irregular and their job security virtually nonexistent. Here, the concept of “being a boss” has undergone a profound transformation. Being a boss no longer means actively managing resources or participating in decision-making mechanisms; it now means merely pretending to be independent within the limited options provided by the system. These new work models, marketed as promises of freedom, actually create a labor regime that is cheaper and carries less responsibility.
A similar risk exists in Microsoft’s vision: AI-enabled tools may not empower individuals so much as push them into more flexible, fragmented, and measurable forms of labor. This raises a critical question: Why do tech giants consistently portray the future through optimistic scenarios? Why do we not adequately discuss the darker possibilities created by AI—such as mass unemployment, income inequality, and social injustice?
This may be closely tied to marketing needs and the consumption of false status. Hopeful narratives are preferred to legitimize AI investments and increase social acceptance. Such discourses play a vital role in sustaining the neoliberal economic order, which is built on mortgaging the future. Most technology companies rely on neoliberal narratives that elevate individual freedom. Concepts like becoming a boss or an entrepreneur carry strong appeal within this ideological framework. At the same time, users’ status aspirations are also nourished, creating a dual benefit.
Microsoft’s statement can thus be read as a typical example of this “hope merchant” strategy. Through a vague promise of freedom, it may be attempting to generate social consent in advance against the radical social change that AI technology inherently implies—and the inevitable discontent that such change will produce. In the wake of such large-scale transformations, the dominant strategy for depicting the future is often precisely this: painting optimistic pictures.
Thorstein Veblen’s concept of “conspicuous consumption,” developed to understand the nature of modern capitalist societies, reveals the dynamics underlying today’s widespread status inflation. In his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen argues that goods and services are consumed not only to satisfy basic needs but also to visibly signal social status. Consumption becomes a performance of one’s position within society.
Another leading critic of modern social order, Guy Debord, argues in his book The Society of the Spectacle (1967) that in modern capitalism, lived experience has been replaced by images, and people have been transformed into passive consumers. Spectacle alienates individuals, commodifies human experience, and generates false statuses. According to Debord, this “spectacle” culture is the ultimate instrument of social control in late capitalism; it shapes desires and perceptions to sustain power, functioning as a powerful mechanism of social control by distributing small shares from the abundant pie.
These perspectives offer a powerful analytical tool for critiquing today’s visions of AI-supported work life. For instance, Microsoft’s promise that “everyone will be a boss” does not concern genuine ownership of the means of production; rather, it offers individuals status symbols mediated by technology. Here, being a boss does not mean controlling production processes; it means appearing “successful” and “independent” within the limited freedoms the system allows. In other words, the promise of bosshood does not represent a fundamental change in the conditions of production. Instead, it signals a new form of conspicuous performance centered on individual productivity and visible output.
Veblen’s “conspicuous consumption” and Debord’s “society of the spectacle” are reappearing in the digital age as “conspicuous productivity.” Success stories displayed on social media profiles, personal brands cultivated on freelance platforms, and narratives of individual entrepreneurship have become the new rituals of status. Here, the visibility of productivity matters more than production itself. Thus, the very idea of production is transformed into a form of consumption and massified. The dreamed-of ideal of bosshood thus reverts to the early years of modernity, when everyone was expected to be their own boss.
Of course, all this does not mean that technology is inherently bad. But the consequences of technological developments depend on how we manage them. If AI tools are used solely to increase efficiency and reduce costs, they may open the door to a new labor crisis. Conversely, if supported by collective bargaining processes, fair regulations, and new forms of labor rights, AI could become a genuine tool for strengthening individual and social freedom. Therefore, the central question is not whether “AI will make people bosses,” but rather: “What kind of workplace do we want?”
For the future will be determined not by the possibilities technology offers, but by how we organize those possibilities.
