Generative artificial intelligence has become widely accepted as a tool that increases productivity. Yet the technology is far from mature. Large language models advance rapidly from one generation to the next, and experts can only speculate how AI will affect the workforce and peoples’ daily lives.

As a materials scientist, I am interested in how materials and the technologies that derive from them affect society. AI is one example of a technology driving global change – particularly through its demand for materials and rare minerals.

But before AI evolved to its current level, two other technologies exemplified the process created by the demand for specialized materials: cars and smartphones.

Often, the mass adoption of a new invention changes human behavior, which leads to new technologies and infrastructures reliant upon the invention. In turn, these new technologies and infrastructures require new or improved materials – and these often contain critical minerals: those minerals that are both essential to the technology and strain the supply chain.

The unequal distribution of these minerals gives leverage to the nations that produce them. The resulting power shifts strain geopolitical relations and drive the search for new mineral sources. New technology nurtures the mining industry.

At the beginning of the 20th century, only 5 out of 1,000 people owned a car, with annual production around a few thousand. Workers commuted on foot or by tram. Within a two-mile radius, many people had all they needed: from........

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