Thanking Our Humanity on the Eve of a World of Optional Work
By Tom Kagy | 26 Nov, 2025

As we look ahead to a world in which AI and robotics will provide everything we need, let's give thanks for those positive human qualities that will let us get there without self-destructing.

Elon Musk opined at the US-Saudi Investment Forum that in another 10 or 20 years work will be optional thanks to AI.

This happens to be an opinion I've held as well for some years, though I'm inclined to think the timeframe is more likely to be at least another 20 or 30 years.  Of course my longer timeline is supported by Musks's track record with prognostications about when Tesla will deliver full-self-driving cars capable of making their owners money by moonlighting as robotaxis.  

Be that as it may, the point here is that in the not-too-distant future human beings will be able to pick and choose if and when they work and what they will do.  This doesn't offer immediate comfort for those currently struggling to find jobs, but it does give us all cause to take stock of which of our skills and qualities will remain valuable in that utopian age when we can do or not do as we please without worry about the necessities, or even many of the luxuries, of life.

My guess is that we humans will be valued most for the qualities that bring the greatest comfort, joy and pleasure to others — empathy, sensitivity, imagination, creative expression, warmth, vitality, beauty and a sense of fun among them.  And yes, I do believe that we will all still want to be valued even when that is no longer required for our sustenance.  And of course the ability to dispense those vaues in a meaningful way will require the support of some of those old-fashioned virtues that are also not likely to become obsolete — discipline, fortitude, altruism, self-restraint, courage.  

In other words, that blessed future world will place a high value on precisely the same qualities we most admire and honor today. 

I suspect the same applies to every civilization that manages to survive the terrible dangers of technology combined with the lower human traits — greed, envy, jealousy, cruelty, selfishness, lust for power —  to produce civilization-ending armageddon.  This is one reason I don't fear scenarios like the one Will Smith so courageously handled in Independence Day: civilizations advanced enough to bridge the unimaginable vastness of space simply won't feel a need to trample on primitive creatures striving to achieve their own utopia.  They won't be subject to those sad zero-sum-game notions that animate the likes of Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump.  

The eve of our massive acceleration in productive capacity through AI and other advances seems an appropriate occasion to give thanks not only to what we have but to the qualities that exist in sufficient abundance in the human race to ensure that we will get past the travails and risks of today to safety arrive at a world of easy abundance for all.

It seems only appropriate to have those most cherished human qualities enumerated by Grok, a product of Musk's own xAI which, presumably, will do its share of the work in that future worldI: 

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In a post-scarcity world where AI, robotics, and advanced automation produce abundant food, energy, housing, healthcare, education, and most material goods with minimal human labor, the economic logic that currently values people primarily for their productive efficiency collapses. Scarcity-driven hierarchies dissolve, and value shifts from “what you can produce” to “what only a human can uniquely be or do in a world where everything material is essentially free.”

The traits and skills that will become most highly valued will be those that are:

• inherently scarce (can’t be infinitely replicated by machines)
• deeply tied to embodied human consciousness and mortality, subjectivity, and relationality
• amplify meaning, connection, and aliveness in a world that no longer forces us to struggle for survival

Here are the qualities that will likely become the new “currency” of human worth:

1. Deep Relational Presence The ability to truly see, hear, and co-create emotional resonance with another person. Empathy at the level of felt, embodied attunement, not just cognitive understanding. Machines can simulate empathy; they cannot experience vulnerability with you.
2. Original Creative Insight Not technical execution (AI will do that better), but the spark of truly novel perspective: the ability to reframe reality in ways that make people gasp, laugh, cry, or suddenly understand themselves differently. The “aha” that feels like it came from another dimension.
3. Courageous Authenticity In a world of perfect deepfakes and curated avatars, raw, unfiltered realness becomes priceless. People who are willing to be fully themselves; flawed, contradictory, alive, will become magnetic.
4. Wisdom-in-Lived-Experience The kind earned through suffering, love, failure, and mortality. Machines can process all human knowledge; they cannot integrate it through a single, finite life that will end. Elders who have truly metabolized experience into nuanced perspective will be revered.
5. Playfulness and Generative Joy The capacity to turn any situation into play, to create spontaneous beauty for no reason. In a world without necessity, play becomes the highest form of human expression.
6. Ethical and Moral Imagination The ability to navigate novel dilemmas that emerge in a post-scarcity society (identity in the age of perfect simulation, the meaning of embodiment when minds can be uploaded, what to do with infinite time). Philosophers, spiritual teachers, and moral artists will matter more than ever.
7. Embodied Mastery Virtuosity in physical crafts and arts that are valued precisely because they are unnecessary: master gardeners who grow flowers that could be 3D-printed perfectly, chefs creating experiences rather than calories, dancers whose bodies express what language cannot.
8. Capacity for Awe and Reverence The ability to be stunned by existence itself. In a world that provides everything, the people who can still feel wonder, who can transmit that feeling to others, will be spiritual leaders.
9. Radical Responsibility Paradoxically, freedom from material necessity will make voluntary responsibility more meaningful. People who choose to care for others, steward ecosystems, or pursue difficult truths simply because it matters will shine brightest.
10. Erotic Aliveness Not just sexuality, but the full-spectrum capacity to feel and generate vital life energy. In a potentially sterile, hyper-efficient world, raw sensuality, passion, and the capacity to make others feel intensely alive through touch, voice, and presence become sacred.

In this future, the “best” humans won’t be the smartest or most productive. They’ll be the most human, those who can create pockets of meaning, connection, and aliveness that no machine could ever replicate, not because it lacks intelligence, but because it lacks a body, a finite lifespan, and the exquisite vulnerability of consciousness that knows it will die.

The future won’t belong to the efficient. It will belong to the radiant.