Why Digital ID Is Inevitable in the Age of AI – And How Society Must Rethink It
By: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
The recent outcry against the UK government’s proposed digital ID system—culminating in almost two million people signing a petition to reject it—reveals a deep mistrust between citizens, institutions, and technology. The public fears mass surveillance, erosion of freedoms, and another layer of bureaucracy cloaked in the language of “innovation.” Yet while this resistance is real, it risks obscuring a deeper truth: in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), something akin to digital ID is not just likely, but inevitable. The real debate is not whether society will adopt it, but how it will be designed and integrated into existing systems.
This paradox is at the heart of my book The Age of the Technocrats—a timely book exploring how AI, the web, and corporatism are reshaping governance. I argue that human societies have always resisted new technologies at first, only to embrace them later as indispensable. This is what I call The Equal Voice: the historical pattern where rejection eventually transforms into reliance. What the public resists today, it will likely not be able to live without tomorrow.
We have seen this pattern before. Bank cards, online shopping, mobile apps, even social media—all provoked scepticism and fear when first introduced. Today, they structure the very fabric of everyday life. Digital identity is no different. In a world where AI increasingly mediates employment, healthcare, finance, and government services, reliable and immutable verification systems will form the backbone of participation.
The Problem of Duplication
The current UK debate is framed around the introduction of a new digital ID system, but the real issue is duplication. The UK already has the National Insurance (NI) number, just as the United States has the Social Security (SS) number. Both were designed in the industrial age to track welfare contributions, taxation, and employment. Both have already been digitised. They are, in effect, pre-existing digital IDs.
The controversy stems from layering a new identity structure on top of the old, which citizens perceive as unnecessary, intrusive, and confusing. Instead of duplicating systems, governments should evolve the identifiers already in place. What NI in UK and SS in US numbers lack is not digitisation—they already exist in databases—but scalability into the new technological order defined by AI and blockchain.
From Digitisation to AI Integration
In The Age of the Technocrats, I describes a world moving beyond the authority of parliaments and parties into systems governed by algorithms, platforms, and corporate-intelligence networks. The speed of technological change now outpaces political governance. In this context, identity must keep up.
To remain functional in an AI-driven society, identifiers like NI in UK and SS in US numbers must transition from being mere database entries to immutable, AI-verifiable, blockchain-secured identities.
- Immutability: Blockchain systems prevent forgery and manipulation, ensuring that once an identity is registered, it cannot be tampered with.
- Verification at Scale: AI can automate verification for employers, financial institutions, or healthcare providers instantly, reducing fraud and administrative burden.
- Transparency and Trust: Blockchain’s public ledger nature builds accountability, allowing citizens to see how their identity is used, accessed and verified in real time, and instantly receive multi-channel notification by email and a text message with a reference number for the transactional event.
This would mean that instead of introducing “another ID,” governments could upgrade existing NI in UK and SS in US infrastructures into smart, AI-ready frameworks that serve the same purpose—only more securely and efficiently.
The Public Perception Gap
Why, then, is the public resistant? The answer lies in perception. Citizens have not been shown how these systems would work in practice. Most people still imagine “digital ID” as an entirely new database where government stores even more of their private information. They have not been educated in the mechanics of how existing identifiers could evolve into AI-enhanced systems without duplication, where individuals have more control over how their information is accessed and used.
Here, The Equal Voice principle comes into play again. Just as society came to see the usefulness of once-feared technologies, the public must first see the practicality of AI-scaled identity systems. Demonstrations of how NI in UK and SS in US numbers can be secured on blockchain, how verification becomes seamless for employers, and how fraud prevention is strengthened will gradually shift perception from rejection to reliance.
Beyond Resistance: The Technocratic Horizon
My vision of the technocratic age is one in which intelligence becomes legitimacy. Governance will increasingly be rooted in efficiency, systems logic, and technological competence rather than political ideology. In this world, identifiers like digital IDs are not add-ons; they are the foundations of participation in everyday life.
The UK’s current digital ID controversy is, therefore, less about freedom versus control, and more about whether governments will design intelligent systems or duplicative ones. If the latter, mistrust will deepen. If the former, society will eventually recognise their indispensability.
Conclusion: Preparing Society for the AI Era
The resistance to digital ID in the UK should not be dismissed. It is a signal of distrust that governments must take seriously. But it should also not be mistaken as a final rejection. History tells us that society will, in time, adopt systems that prove to be necessary and useful.
The future lies not in creating entirely new identifiers but in scaling up NI and SS systems into blockchain- and AI-enabled infrastructures that are transparent, immutable, and efficient. These systems will not only perform the role of digital ID but surpass it, creating verification tools fit for the AI age.
Society needs to be shown this vision. Once it sees how such systems secure rights, streamline verification, and prevent fraud, what seems threatening today will become indispensable tomorrow. In the age of AI, identity is not optional. The question is only whether we will design it intelligently—or stumble into it unprepared.