Why the Future Needs to Be Human to Human
I’ve been consuming too much AI-future content lately — the doomers, the optimists, and everyone in between. The New York Times, Ezra Klein, Anthropic’s Jack Clark and his erudite British accent, the OpenAI Chris Lehane on CNBC (without the British accent). The spectrum runs from unfathomable abundance and four-day work weeks on one end to 99% of humans becoming serfs living on just enough to cover food and shelter on the other. Why do I keep reading these essays and listening to these podcasts?
Here’s an overly simplified framework that lands somewhere in the middle — but one worth taking seriously in a world where the aggressive displacement scenario actually plays out.
The Human to Human Economy
Even if tens of millions of jobs get handed over to AI platforms and robots, there’s still a massive job creation opportunity hiding in plain sight: humans helping other humans. Three areas can become the foundation of this “human to human” economy.
Education. More teachers, coaches, and instructors, all focused on helping people learn continuously from pre-K through their entire working lives. Not the current model with its cost barriers and credentialing red tape. A version where educators are compensated well enough to do their best work without stressing about rent. Make learning a public good so it’s always there to help them retool and pivot into their next human-focused career.
Health and Wellness. More doctors, nurse practitioners, nutritionists, child care workers, and fitness professionals — all focused on helping people live healthier lives across every stage. Not the current model where quality health and wellness support is a privilege of income. A version where pathways into these careers are open and well-compensated, and where the services themselves are accessible to everyone who needs them. Make health and wellness a core quality of life layer, not a luxury tier reserved for people who can afford it.
Guidance. This one matters most to me. People working with people as therapists, advisors, mentors, and counselors, and being available when a fellow human needs another human instead of an AI agent or chatbot. This may be our real litmus test for how serious we are about a human future. The day we hand guidance fully over to AI is arguably the day we’ve handed everything over to this technology.
These three career pathways aren’t exhaustive. Restaurant workers who create real community dining experiences, construction and trade workers who build and maintain our physical world, and likely many other “human to human” purpose-driven roles, should be viewed as critical to enabling the human to human economy.
Funding is the Hard Part
And this is where the optimistic framework typically falls apart. Capitalism keeps score with one metric: earnings. There is massive incentive for any business owner to push expenses toward zero, and assuming AI only accelerates that, don’t expect capital allocators to voluntarily redirect their expanding returns. Billionaires, millionaires, and corporations aren’t going to fund politicians who raise their taxes in the name of spreading AI-generated wealth.
Universal Basic Income (UBI) alone doesn’t solve the problem either. Handing people a check without rebuilding the connective tissue of meaningful human work will fall short too.
What’s actually required is a policy commitment, like an “AI dividend” formula that fairly compensates investors on a risk-adjusted basis while directing a meaningful public ownership share toward education, health care, and guidance. And not just from AI companies but also from the thousands of businesses whose profit margins will swell because of AI. The incremental global income generated by these technologies has to flow in a meaningful way back to all humans. Right now it flows entirely to capital allocators. That’s a choice, and it’s a choice that can be modified with political will.
The doomer scenario gets more attention today because it’s scary, and scary writes better click-bait headlines. But the human-to-human economy is a real structural alternative that federal and state governments, and companies of all sizes, need to start building right now. Without doing so, we’ll idly watch capitalism’s incentives widen the global wealth and quality of life gaps the doomers predict. The future most people hoped to avoid becomes the one we built by default.
NextPlay>Forward AI Disclaimer: I very actively use artificial intelligence and large language models to generate the content you read here, but I do review it and edit it to make sure it can be generally useful to people who read it. Keep in mind that AI can make mistakes - check important information. Let me know if I make any errors and I will correct them.