This transformation is linked to a fundamental reconfiguration of the elite. The classical elite of the twentieth century was produced through universities, major media outlets and state institutions. It defined legitimate language, controlled access to knowledge and was organized as a chain of trust: the university trained the expert, the expert shaped discourse, the media transmitted it, and political institutions implemented it. Today this construct is disintegrating. Universities no longer have a monopoly on knowledge, the media no longer monopolize attention, and experts no longer retain exclusive interpretive authority.

The new functional elite emerges in the spaces where systems are controlled rather than ideas interpreted. It is structured around technological platforms, capital, networks, and infrastructure. Those who can design these systems, manage flows of data and resources and create scalable narratives constitute the core of functional power. They do not rely on institutional legitimacy; their authority derives from the effectiveness of their actions and their capacity to influence operational processes, a form of operational authority.

The traditional elite, which maintains control over norms, morality and language, perceives a threat because it is losing its principal asset: the gatekeeping function. Historically, access to power required a diploma, a career trajectory, and institutional recognition. Today advancement depends on idea, network, capital, and scale. The rules that once governed influence have become inadequate, and new instruments create a novel map of authority.

This inevitably produces a conflict between normative and functional elites. The former operate through procedures, moral authority and legitimacy, while the latter shape reality and govern the production of the future. History demonstrates that control over processes rather than words is decisive.

In this context, educational institutions, which traditionally reproduced the elite through professional preparation and cultural socialization, increasingly play only an indirect role. The locus of influence and skill formation has shifted to private networks, corporate schools, closed research centres, accelerators and online platforms. These are the spaces in which the capabilities to act in complex systems, manage resource flows and construct networks are cultivated. Universities remain spaces of formal legitimacy and cultural symbolism, but their capacity to influence operational reality is diminishing. This mirrors historical patterns: institutions that lose control over key resources gradually lose their social authority.

At the individual level, this produces new criteria for power and autonomy. Authority no longer stems from office, status or institutional approval. It depends on the capacity to design processes, manage attention and resources, construct networks and control the tools through which the surrounding world functions. Consequently, skills such as systems thinking, intellectual autonomy, network creation, attention management and AI instrument control become critical. Those lacking these competencies are placed at a disadvantage, their ability to influence events and processes is diminished and social and economic mobility becomes constrained.

For society at large, these changes generate a new structure of social stratification. The old elite, oriented towards normative standards and institutional legitimacy, retains symbolic power but loses the capacity to govern processes. The new functional elite constructs operational systems, defines the rules of engagement and determines access to resources. Conflict between these layers is inevitable because they operate with different forms of capital—symbolic and procedural—and speak different languages of legitimacy. This tension manifests in political confrontations, cultural crises and social strain.

A historical perspective confirms the consistency of these patterns. In the late Roman Republic, early modern European city-states and other periods of elite transition, formal institutions retained symbolic significance while control over resources and infrastructure created new concentrations of power. The twenty-first century mirrors this dynamic, but in an accelerated, globalized form. Contemporary digital infrastructure, global financial networks and information platforms function analogously to armies, trade and credit in historical precedents. The production of the future depends on those who command processes rather than solely on laws, symbols or moral legitimacy.

Practically, this implies that the future of social institutions, states and everyday life will be determined not by ideology or declaration but by the capacity to manage systems, allocate resources and construct functional networks. Those able to operate effectively within these systems will wield real power and influence. Those reliant on outdated forms of legitimacy will remain on the periphery, limited to symbolic authority without the capacity to shape outcomes.

At the individual level, contemporary freedom is measured by the ability to construct and manage personal ecosystems. Historical analogies illuminate this dynamic. Late Roman patricians without control over armies, and early modern European aristocrats without capital, lost influence while formally retaining status. The acceleration and global scale of twenty-first-century transformations amplify this phenomenon. Mastery of systemic thinking, attention management, intellectual autonomy, network creation and control of operational tools constitutes the new currency of power and agency, equivalent to the control over armies, trade and credit in previous eras.

Consequently, there are inevitable losers in this transformation. Individuals confined to executing narrow tasks, dependent on instructions, reliant on institutional approval or whose authority rests solely on normative or moral recognition are increasingly marginalized. Their competencies are valuable only within legacy systems, which are now diminishing in relevance. In contrast, individuals able to integrate themselves into functional networks acquire influence and resources. The gap between these groups defines contemporary social stratification and highlights the divergence between symbolic authority and operational control.

These dynamics also illuminate the significance of autonomous, value-laden discourse. Texts and positions that challenge normative, bureaucratized language acquire strategic importance. Emotion and conviction within such discourse signal cognitive independence and the capacity to act as a subject within evolving systems rather than as a passive object of institutional discourse. These forms of expression anticipate broader transformations in social hierarchies and the reallocation of influence.

In sum, the twenty-first century is witnessing the systematic replacement of normative elites with functional ones, the shift from control of language to control of processes and the movement from ideological interpretation to the engineering of reality. Mastery of systemic analysis, attention management, intellectual autonomy, network construction and control over operational instruments constitutes the principal determinant of individual and collective agency.

Those reliant on traditional legitimacy, moral authority or institutional approval are increasingly displaced. Understanding these processes is essential for comprehending the mechanisms of power, freedom and social structure in the emerging global order.

Seen in long historical perspective, the emergence of artificial intelligence is neither a technological accident nor a mere convenient tool. It functions as a structural catalyst of the very transformation of elites described above. Artificial intelligence radically accelerates and exposes the distinction between symbolic and operational power. Where elites once relied on prestige, tradition, cultural capital and institutional titles, AI replaces prestige by shifting the field towards cold functionality. Authority no longer belongs to those who possess the right to speak but to those capable of constructing effective systems using new instruments.

AI dismantles the final illusion that intellectual labour alone guarantees social power. It standardizes, scales and commodifies cognitive operations. What was recently considered unique human capital becomes a service. In doing so, it dissolves large segments of the traditional intelligentsia as a politically and economically significant class. Not because these people become less intelligent but because their type of competence ceases to be scarce. Power migrates towards those who control the architecture of AI deployment, data, infrastructure, and the channels through which solutions are integrated into real processes. The waning of AI and institutional authority as we knew it.

Simultaneously, AI reinforces the position of the new functional elite. It transforms systems thinking, process design and the management of flows into the primary forms of power. Where institutional accumulation once required decades, it now demands a properly constructed technological and networked configuration. AI becomes a multiplier of power for those already embedded within these processes and an ultimate barrier for those who remain confined within the hierarchies of earlier professions.

In this sense, AI does not merely transform the labour market. It restructures the very geometry of society. The divide between subject and object of history becomes sharper than ever. Subjects are those who can employ AI as an instrument of reality construction. Objects are those whom AI displaces into the domains of service, control, execution, and interpretation of decisions made by others.

Equally important is the way AI undermines the authority of language itself. In the former world, control over discourse, interpretation, norms and legitimate formulations constituted one of the central sources of power. Today, algorithms are indifferent to rhetoric, morality, and ideology. They operate through structures, probabilities, optimizations, and data flows. This radically diminishes the value of traditional humanistic forms of domination and strengthens those who think not in terms of meaning but in terms of systems.

Thus, AI completes the historical transition that began long before its arrival: from a society of symbols to a society of processes, from the power of interpretation to the power of design, and from elites who speak about the world to elites who assemble the world itself. It is within this space that the new configuration of freedom, power and social stratification is now being formed.