By Ken Lerona
Artificial Intelligence is reshaping the world in real time. From the way we learn and work to how we vote, heal, and even pray, AI is no longer a future we await—it’s a present we’re navigating, whether we’re ready or not. And yet, while its impact reaches every crevice of society, the participation in conversation about AI remains disgracefully narrow.
It is still dominated by a handful of names: tech entrepreneurs posing as prophets, policy think tanks who cite each other in circles, and a new priesthood of consultants who speak in jargon and attend the same closed-door summits. The rest of us? We’re reduced to spectators—expected to marvel at the breakthroughs, quietly absorb the fallout, and clap along as the agenda is written without us.
This is not just shortsighted. It is dangerous. And it must stop.
The Future Should Not Be Gatekept
Let’s call it what it is: gatekeeping. The technocrats have built a velvet rope around the AI discourse, pretending that only those who can code or raise venture capital have a legitimate say in the future of intelligence. The rest—the educators, the public health workers, the cooperatives, the indigenous leaders, the unemployed, the single mothers juggling multiple gigs—are conveniently left out.
But AI is not a niche tool for the elite. It is a societal infrastructure. It is determining who gets a loan, which resumes are read, and which students are flagged as “promising,”. It is embedded in platforms we use daily and, increasingly, in decisions we don’t even know are being made for us.
This is why we cannot afford to leave AI to the self-congratulatory cliques. When policies are drafted only by those who build and sell the systems, we don’t get governance—we get capture. When roadmaps are written by a single sector, we don’t get strategy—we get exclusion.
The Cost of Exclusion is Real
We’ve already seen what happens when algorithms are designed without the input of those they affect. Predictive policing tools may disproportionately target the poor. Healthcare AIs underdiagnose conditions in underrepresented populations. Hiring platforms screen out candidates based on proxies for socioeconomic status. In every case, the injustice isn’t just technical—it’s moral.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: silence is complicity. If you see that the room deciding the AI agenda looks like a tech startup reunion, and you say nothing—you’re endorsing a future that’s narrow, biased, and unjust.
We Need a New Kind of Table
It’s not enough to “consult stakeholders” after the fact. We need a new kind of table—one where farmers sit alongside data scientists, where philosophers debate engineers, where teachers co-design with developers. Where local knowledge isn’t dismissed as anecdotal but honored as essential.
Don’t just invite the people “most affected” to react. Invite them to shape the agenda.
If we can’t build AI with the people, then we shouldn’t be building it at all.
This Is an Ethical Fight
There is no such thing as neutral technology. Every system reflects the values of its makers—explicitly or not. So, if the makers are mostly male, wealthy, urban, English-speaking, and technocentric, what kind of world do you think their systems will reinforce?
This is not paranoia. This is pattern.
And that’s why AI governance cannot be another “expert panel” composed of the same 12 names recycled across white papers and webinars. We need barangay captains and bishops. Economists and ethicists. Solo parents and student leaders. If AI is shaping our shared future, we must shape it together.
To Those Hogging the Mic—Step Aside
If you are leading AI conversations but refusing to share the floor, you are part of the problem. If your webinars, summits, and fests include no grassroots voices, no cultural lenses, no dissenting perspectives—you are not informing the public, you are manipulating it.
To the elite who still think this is their playground: enough.
Your worldviews are not universal. Your frameworks are not gospel. And your solutions, while impressive on paper, often crumble in the face of lived reality.
AI is too important to be left to the cliques.
It’s time we democratize this conversation. Not tomorrow. Now.
Ken Lerona is a business consultant with over 20 years of marketing and branding experience. He conducts talks and workshops for private and government organizations and consults on innovation and reputational risk management. Connect with him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/kenlerona.
