The AI Line

Happy Monday and welcome to your weekly dispatch of future-facing sense-making (between rounds of Mario Kart World).

AI isn’t just coming for jobs. It’s coming for the logic that underpins them.

For generations, we’ve treated work as a moral anchor: it gives meaning, justifies survival, and distributes reward. But what happens when we no longer need labor?

As machines learn to drive, code, diagnose, negotiate, and teach – often better and faster than humans – we get closer to a reckoning: not of employment, but of worth.

The skills we once traded for dignity are becoming cheap, abundant, and replaceable. In this light, “just get a job” starts to sound less like advice and more like denial.

We face a political choice disguised as an economic inevitability.

Do we cling to outdated beliefs about effort and merit, or do we accept that automation is not neutral? That who benefits from it is a decision, not a law of nature?

This brings us to the “AI line”. Increasingly, we are judged by whether we are above it or below it. If you can do something AI can’t, you stay relevant. If AI can do it better, faster, or cheaper, you fall below. That line is shifting fast. And what we do next – socially, politically, technologically – will determine whether it becomes a cutoff or a floor.

I am not incredibly hopefuly about our ability to move this line. Markets perform optimally, which leaves little room for humanity. In a sense, we are all responsible for ensuring our collective relevance in society. How do we design futures where everyone thrive?

Until next week,
MZ

P.S. We’re hosting a live demo of Signals, our generative research tool, next Thursday, July 24. If you work in futures or innovation, join us for a first look – and get a free custom scan. Register here.

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Governing Unthinkable Futures (Talk)

A few months ago, I wrote about how unthinkable futures emerge from the failure of our imagination, rather than from its expansion. At FutureDays in Lisbon, I had the chance to take this into more practical territory: If we can't think our way to radical futures, how do we actually work with them…

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7 months ago · 8 likes · 1 comment · Simon Höher

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