Civilization in the Age of AI: Civilization as a Social System for Realizing and Advancing Capability Continuity

Abstract

This conceptual paper reinterprets civilization in the age of AI through Capability Continuity: the capacity to form, preserve, transfer, adapt, and further develop capabilities across changes in time, generations, and environments. It argues that writing, education, professional institutions, organizations, computing, and networks can be understood as social mechanisms for sustaining capability across generations. Generative AI extends the effective locus of capability from human actors toward Human-AI collaborative systems. Within this framework, education constitutes the social implementation of Human Capability Continuity, while AI engineering provides an engineering basis for the continuity of AI and Human-AI collaborative capability. The paper integrates these perspectives and proposes civilization as a social system that forms, preserves, transfers, adapts, and develops the capabilities of humans and human-built intellectual systems, while preserving human agency, judgment, and responsibility.